Planting Garlic

Successful growing garlic starts with good soil preparation. Garlic prefers a loamy soil with a ph in the range of 6.2 and 7. A reading lower than this means your soil is too acidic. Apply a little lime to correct for over acidity. Now you want to add compost or humus to your soil which creates a good growing environment. Prepare your soil to a depth of approximately 12 inches. To encourage the Fall planted garlic to send out roots we add a feeding of low nitrogen at planting and higher nitrogen in the Spring. We farm organically and use composted chicken manure or blood/bone meal. We do not use commercial fertilizers or pesticides. To improve the quality of your soil you can work in compost, aged manure, well-rotted straw or peat moss. Growing and turning in a cover crop before planting adds lots of organic material. A good cover crop for garlic is Alfalfa, Hairy Vetch, Buckwheat and Red Clover. All of these methods will improve your soil and grow a healthier crop. It’s also important to rotate your allium crops to reduce the risk of disease or pest. We rotate on a 4 year rotation method. Separate the cloves (popping) and set aside any that are very small. Eat those or make garlic powder from the ones you don’t plant. If any are soft or appear to be rotting cull those cloves out. We pop the cloves just prior to planting to avoid dehydration or deteriorating the clove. In your home garden, CSA, or farm you will want to space 6 inches between plants. This will provide adequate room for bulb development. Plant the cloves of hard necked garlic pointy end up, and 1-3 inches deep depending on your planting zone. In colder more Northern areas plant at the deeper range. Softneck varieties can be planted in any direction. We begin planting around the first frost. That is the beginning to mid-October for us in Ohio. You want the bulbs to put down roots before the ground freezes. Water the bulbs at planting time to encourage immediate root growth. We usually have Fall rains and do not need to water the garlic.

If you plant your garlic plot in rows and plant the cloves 6 inches apart you will plant 2 cloves every foot. If you plant in a 5ft x 5 ft bed you would plant 10 cloves in each row and 10 cloves across for a total of 100 cloves. Depending on the variety you choose you will need approximately 2 pounds of garlic. One pound of garlic will plant in approximately a 25-foot row. If you plant 1 pound of hard neck garlic you should harvest between 4-6 pounds of garlic. If you plant 1 pound of soft neck garlic you should harvest between 6-10 pounds of garlic. Artichokes approximately 60 cloves per pound Asiatics approximately 45 cloves per pound Marble Purple Stripes approximately 50 cloves per pound Porcelains approximately 40 cloves per pound Rocamboles approximately 60 cloves per pound Silverskins approximately 60-70 cloves per pound Turbans approximately 45 cloves per pound You can browse through the various garlic varieties available with us. You can garlic online from our store.

As far as shipping goes we primarily use USPS flat rate boxes. If however a package is less costly to send to you via another shipping company we will use them. You decide which you’d prefer. We love to shop online but will often cancel a sale at checkout because we are aghast at the shipping cost so we have put together packages with free shipping to defray the cost to you. We wll never charge a profit for shipping. We ship our garlic only within the USA. We are unable to ship to Hawaii, Idaho, and some counties in Washington State due to allium import restrictions. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Garlic is planted 2-3 weeks prior to Hard ground freeze* in order to produce a root system. So planting in the US is October thru December depending on your zone! Planting too early produces top growth that may weaken the clove through Winter. *Hard freeze takes place in December/January