Fall Homesteading: How to Plant Garlic

It's time to plant garlic! Unlike many vegetables, garlic gets planted in the Fall and is harvested the following summer. Garlic is uber easy to plant and grow. I've been growing garlic for ~ 10 years, so here are some tips for how to make it work well. This is a great homesteading project to get your kids involved in, too.

I love the slower pace of homesteading in the late Fall: the summer garden has mostly played itself out, we're still months away from baby chick time, and the chicken butchering is over, so there's not a lot to do. One homesteading task that I take on most years is planting garlic. You can plant your garlic in the Fall and then harvest it the following summer.

When to Plant Garlic

Depending on where you live, garlic should be planted in early to late Fall. If the ground freezes hard where you live, aim to get your garlic planted in September or October, ~6-8 weeks before the first hard frost.

Here in southern New Mexico, it's still too warm to plant garlic in early Fall, so it's best to wait until November-early December. I usually aim to plant our garlic sometime around Thanksgiving, although a few years it hasn't happened until well into December. If it gets too late, the garlic heads won't grow as big, but they're still totally good to use.

Where to Buy Garlic for Planting

I buy garlic for planting at the healthfood store. Any organic garlic will work fine for planting. Look for large, fresh heads of garlic and avoid garlic that is already sprouting.

Non-organic garlic should also be avoided because it is often treated with sprout-inhibitors that may prevent it from growing well.

Location and Soil for Garlic Planting

Make sure to plant your garlic in full sun, where it will be able to grow undisturbed until early summer. I usually plant my garlic out front instead of in the garden, as it doesn't need very much space and the garlic stalks will provide some nice greenery until it is time for harvest.

Garlic needs well-drained soil in order to grow well. Unlike our summer garden, I haven't put a lot of effort into building up the soil where I plant garlic ever year. If you have very sandy soil like I do, definitely start out by amending your soil with some compost to add organic matter and nutrients to the soil. Adding compost can work well to help compacted soils drain better, too.

After the first year, I generally haven't added much to build up the soil further. Many years, I don't amend the soil at all. Some years I may add a little organic fertilizer in the spring. The heads of garlic will certainly grow larger if the soil is better, but you can still grow fairly decent heads of garlic even if the soil isn't great.

How to Plant Garlic

1. Make sure your soil is moist. If your soil is very dry, water it and let the water soak in before you start planting. This will make it much easier to dig the holes for each garlic clove. Once you have your soil ready, it's time for planting!
   

2. Separate the heads of garlic into individual cloves. You'll want to plant the larger cloves, but not the little ones that are in the middle of the heads of garlic. You can just keep those little garlic cloves to use for cooking.
   

3. Lay out your cloves of garlic in your planting area so you can see where you want to plant each clove. Garlic does not need a lot of space, but aim for ~6 inches between each clove of garlic and about ~10-12 inches between rows.
   

4. Dig a hole for each clove. You could use a trowel to dig holes for your garlic cloves, but I much prefer to use a bulb planter. That makes it really quick and easy because the bulb planter grabs onto the soil, holding it until you're ready to dump it back into the hole.
   

5. Place a clove of garlic in the hole, pointy-side-up, and then cover with soil. You can potentially cover the soil with mulch to help with water retention, especially if it does not rain much where you live. I use pine cones as mulch because they're readily available from our trees, but other mulch materials should would work fine, too.

Watering Your Garlic Until Harvest Time

If it doesn't rain or snow much where you live, make sure to water your garlic about once a month over the cold months. My garlic usually comes up out of the ground around late January, with little green stalks.

Once the weather is warming up, it's important to water the garlic regularly if there's not much rain. I water my garlic about once a week in early spring, increasing to 3-5 times weekly by the time we reach the 95-100 degree hot summer months.

When to Harvest Your Garlic

Garlic will be ready to harvest in the summer. Watch for the bottom half of the stalks to turn brown. Here in southern New Mexico, my garlic is usually ready to harvest by around mid-June.

Carefully dig up the heads of garlic, wipe off the moist dirt, and then place the full stalks to cure in a dry, warm place out of direct sunlight. I cure my garlic on the porch for a couple weeks, until the stalks are fully brown and dry. Then I cut off the stalks and clean up the heads before bringing them inside for use.

Storing Your Garlic Harvest

Depending on how much garlic you planted and how much you cook with it, you may be able to use up all of your garlic without needing to preserve any.

I typically grow lots of garlic, so I keep out plenty of garlic for cooking to last for the next couple months. I freeze my excess garlic in individual cloves (with the skin still on), to be used for cooking over the rest of the year.

Do you grow garlic? What other Fall homesteading tasks are you working on?

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