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It’s Time to Plant Garlic

Posted by LacCreta Holland on 11/23, 2015 at 09:06 AM

It’s Time to Plant Garlic

Planting garlic now can give you results like these next summer.

Late fall is hardly the time you think about gardening. Usually you are putting your garden to bed by cleaning up the remnants from the summer’s growing season. But as you clean up, remember that planting small cloves of garlic will yield big garlic bulbs next summer!

Garlic is probably the easiest plant to grow. I was told by a vendor from the Downtown State College Framers Market (the one on Fridays) that NOW is the time to plant garlic. She grows organic garlic and sells bags of bulbs (about 10 in each bag) for $6. That was more than I needed to plant, but since I forgot to plant garlic last year, I am using the rest for cooking this fall.

Friday was the last day for the Downtown Market outdoors, but if you can’t get there today, vendors will go inside next week at the Municipal Building (the Tuesday Boalsburg Market is now inside St. John’s United Church of Christ).

Garlic planting is simple. Just break the head of garlic into cloves. Choose a sunny spot of dirt. Dig a hole, 2 inches deep, in your soil and place a clove of garlic, root side (or flat side) down—pointy end up—in the soil and cover it with dirt. As you work down the row, place each garlic clove about 4 to 6 inches apart. You can scatter a bit of mulch over the top to help with the constant temperature changes to the garden in the winter, but I have not done that in the past, and my garlic has grown well.

In the spring, you will see the leaves of the garlic begin to emerge—one of the happiest sights of spring! As summer progresses, you will see garlic scapes grow that can be harvested and sauteed in olive oil for a delicious addition to risotto or veggies. When about 1/3 of the leaves are brown, usually in mid-July, it is time to harvest those lovely bulbs—the payoff for your fall-time gardening.

Tags: gardening | garlic |

Author: LacCreta Holland

Bio: LaCreta Hollandâ€”views on life and food change when you have lived in Italy--believes that good smells from the kitchen make people happy---loves to teach people to cook through my business Happy Valley Learn to Cook

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It’s Time to Plant Garlic