Garlic - Getting the basics right

Garlic is sometimes described as easy to grow, but that does not mean that you can plant your garlic cloves just anywhere and then they look after themselves until harvest time. This post discusses what to do to make your garlic really happy, so you maximise your chances of a great harvest.

Garlic varieties

Garlic is grown in many places around the world, and there hundreds of garlic varieties, developed for their suitability to local climate or taste or storage capability.

Garlic varieties can be roughly divided into two categories: soft-neck and hard-neck. The neck is the stem of the plant just above the garlic globe - the green/brown bit above the dark-red bit in the photo above.

Most, but not all, garlic grown in Tasmania is hard-neck. Hard-neck varieties grow tall and produce a flower-spike. They cope well with Tasmania's relatively cool/cold weather. The bulbs often have a strong complex taste.

Soft-neck varieties 'flop over' as they grow because their neck can't hold up all the foliage. They don't produce a flower-spike. Soft-neck varieties are more suited to milder climates. Their taste is often milder too. They tend to store better than hard-necks.

Good quality bulbs of sought-after varieties sold for planting in food gardens are available through nurseries and seed-companies, and are often not cheap, but worth it, if you want to grow garlic with a particular taste or look.

The Koonya Garlic Festival is a yearly event that in 2025 will be held on Saturday 22 February. It will be a great opportunity to buy wonderful varieties of garlic and learn from those with years of experience growing it.

Garlic-aficionados will not agree with me, but I buy the best looking purple garlic bulbs (hard-necks) that I find at my local IGA shop, select the largest and best-looking individual cloves in those bulbs, and plant them. This seldom leads to disappointment! 

Before planting

• Choose a spot in your food garden where you have fertile soil with good drainage, pH between 6 and 7, all-day sun (even in winter) and not a lot of wind. 
• Avoid dense soils or shade or pH below 6. For info on how to measure and correct pH see blog post Acid or Alkaline on this Food Garden Group blog.
• Don't plant garlic in the same spot where you grew members of the onion family last season.
• Raised beds may provide the best drainage. A wicking bed is ideal as you won't be watering from above and that may decrease the chances of Rust fungus (see below) affecting your garlic.
• Prepare the spot a few months before planting (January - February). Give it as much compost or well-rotted manure as you can spare plus a fair amount of gypsum, and then work all that into the soil.  

Planting

• Buy bulbs, or select bulbs from last season's crop, that are hard and solid. Store them in a cool, dry spot (not the fridge) until planting time.
• Plant early in the period mid-March to early-June, so they will get a long period of time in chilly soil below 7 degrees C. The general rule is 'the later you plant the smaller the yield'.
• Plant enough for your household's needs, plus what you need to plant next season.
• Select from each bulb only the largest best-looking cloves that feel hard and solid. Don't remove the paper skin.
• Before planting, soak the cloves in a weak seaweed solution for a few hours. That will help!
• Remove all weeds and plant-roots where you will plant.
• Plant individual cloves 2-5 centimetres deep (don't plant too shallow), pointy end up, flat end facing down. Make sure the tips don't stick out of the soil.
• Allow 10 centimetres at least between cloves and 15 centimetres at least between rows.
• After planting compact the soil somewhat, so cloves have good contact with the soil.
• Water the area with diluted seaweed solution.
• Don't mulch at this stage as wet soil may rot bulbs.

Over autumn and winter

• Garlic does best if, after planting, it is exposed to a period of cool/cold weather in which it can slowly germinate and grow. Be patient - it may take a while before you actually see foliage above ground.
• Keep the area weed-free - garlic doesn't compete well with weeds.
• Don't water if there is regular rain.

From early spring to harvest time

• When days become longer and garlic plants receive a certain amount of sunlight, they switch from forming leaves, up top, to forming bulbs, down below. This is called 'bulbing'.
• To help bulbing, feed your garlics a handful of sulphate of potash or kelp-meal per sq.metre in early spring, and water that in.
• Foliar feed once a fortnight with fish emulsion (or similar) on days that are warm enough for leaves not to remain wet very long.
• Keep the area weed-free. Root competition affects the size of bulbs.
• Mulch plants with light mulch (eg. sugar cane mulch) that will keep the soil moist, but that will not form a compact layer that may cause rot.

a developing 'scape' - cut it off

• If flower heads develop (see photo), cut them off, so plants don't focus on producing flowers. 
• Use these flower heads (called 'scapes') in your cooking. They have a great mild garlic taste!
• Water your garlics only if there is not enough rain. Garlic is tough. It can cope with soil that is only slightly moist.

Harvest time

• Remove mulch in early November, so bulbs can begin to dry out.
• Lift your garlics when the tips of leaves begin to die off while the rest of the leaves are beginning to go yellow.
• Late November to end of December is a good time for most varieties to be harvested. Let yourself be guided by whether foliage has died off and has gone yellow.
• With a garden fork carefully lift out whole plants.
• Remove excess soil but leave the plants intact.
• Spread them out in a dry spot where rain won't reach them.

• After a few weeks of drying check all the bulbs. The ones that are not hard and solid will not keep well. Strip off their leaves, take them to the kitchen, and use them first.

• Divide plants of which the bulbs are hard and solid into groups of 4 or 5 plants. Lift up each group and make a knot or a plait, of the leaves.  It may be tempting to hang these bunches in the kitchen, but in kitchens there is too much steam and bulbs might rot. Hang the bunches in a cool dry spot with good ventilation.

• I found that cloves in these bunches do rot or shrivel up on occasion. I preserve some garlic using vinegar not too long after harvesting. It is a very good long-term preserving method. The method is explained on the FGG Extra blog here.

Pests

In Tasmania the most common problem with garlic is Rust (see photo). It will often strike plants that are vulnerable because they are not grown in the right conditions. A spot may be too much in the shade or soil is too dense or too wet. Irrigation from above creates the ideal conditions for the Rust fungus to get established.

As soon as Rust arrives, remove affected leaves and help the plants overcome this pest by giving them  some blood & bone, seaweed extract or fish emulsion. Rust-affected plants will produce garlic, but the size of the bulbs may be disappointing.

May your garlic be large and tasty!

Max Bee