Garlic is one of the few crops you plant while everything else is winding down and then largely ignore for nine months. It asks for one afternoon in fall, a thick mulch, and enough patience to leave it alone until July.
The decisions that matter are made before anything goes in the ground: which type you plant, where you buy it, and how deep it goes for your winter. Get those right and the rest is waiting.
When to plant garlic
Plant in fall, roughly four to six weeks before your ground freezes hard. The goal is enough time to grow roots without pushing much top growth before winter. In practice that means late September through October across the north, October into November through the middle of the country, and November or later in mild winter regions.
A few green shoots appearing before winter is not a problem. Garlic is hardy and the shoots will sit through cold perfectly well. What you want to avoid is planting so early that it puts up substantial growth in warm fall soil and spends energy it needs for spring.
Spring planting is possible where fall planting is impractical, but expect noticeably smaller bulbs. Garlic sizes up in response to cold exposure, and a spring-planted clove has not had it.
Hardneck or softneck
This is the choice that shapes everything else, and it mostly comes down to your winter.
Hardneck varieties want real cold and do best from roughly zone six northward. They send up a stiff central stalk and a curling flower stem called a scape, which you snap off in early summer and cook with. Hardnecks give fewer but larger cloves that are easy to peel, with far more flavor range between varieties. They store around three to four months, which is the trade for the flavor.
Softneck varieties suit milder winters and are what supermarkets almost always sell. No scape, more cloves per bulb, smaller and fiddlier to peel, and a flexible neck that can be braided. The trade is storage: softnecks keep about six to eight months, roughly twice as long as hardneck.
If you are north and want flavor, plant hardneck. If you are south or you want garlic that lasts until next summer, plant softneck. Plenty of gardeners grow both.
Do not plant supermarket garlic
It is tempting and it usually disappoints. Grocery garlic is frequently treated with a sprout inhibitor, which is exactly the opposite of what you want. It is almost always a softneck variety selected for shipping and storage rather than for your climate, so it may not size up where you live. And it can carry disease into soil that will be growing alliums for years.
Buy seed garlic from a grower or a seed supplier instead. It costs more per bulb once, and after the first season you can replant your own biggest cloves and never buy again.
Prepare the bed properly
Garlic wants loose, rich, well-drained soil, and it is unforgiving about wet feet. Cloves sitting in saturated ground over winter rot rather than root.
Loosen the bed deeply and work in compost before planting. This is the one point in the garlic year where soil work is easy, since nothing is growing there yet, and the bulbs will spend the next nine months in whatever you leave them. A digging spade turns and breaks up the bed faster than a fork in heavier ground, and it cuts cleanly through any roots that have crept in from the edges.
If your ground holds water at all, plant into a raised bed or a mounded row. Our raised bed guide covers sizing and fill if you are building one.
Avoid ground that grew onions, leeks or garlic in the last three years. Allium diseases persist in soil and rotation is the cheapest control there is.
Planting, step by step
1. Break the bulbs late
Separate bulbs into individual cloves on planting day, not days ahead. The papery skin on each clove is its protection, and cloves broken early dry out at the exposed base. Leave the skin on each clove and do not peel them.
2. Plant only the big cloves
Clove size predicts bulb size fairly directly, so plant the largest ones and cook the small inner cloves. This feels wasteful and is the single easiest way to improve your harvest.
3. Depth depends on your winter
Set cloves pointed end up, flat root end down. In mild climates plant about two inches deep. Where winters are cold, go three to four inches, which protects against frost heave lifting cloves out of the ground over repeated freeze and thaw cycles.
Space cloves about six inches apart with rows around twelve inches apart. Tighter spacing produces smaller bulbs, and garlic is in the ground long enough that crowding it costs you real size.
4. Mulch heavily
Cover the bed with four to six inches of straw or shredded leaves after planting. Mulch moderates soil temperature, stops frost heave, holds moisture and suppresses the spring weeds that would otherwise compete with a crop that cannot shade them out.
In cold regions leave the mulch in place through spring and let the shoots come up through it. In wet or mild regions, pull it back a little in spring so the soil is not held saturated.
Through the season
Garlic needs about an inch of water a week once it is actively growing in spring. Then stop watering two to three weeks before harvest: dry soil at the end helps the wrappers cure firm and improves storage.
If you planted hardneck, scapes appear in early summer as a curling stem. Snap them off once they make one full curl. Leaving them on diverts energy into a flower head instead of the bulb, and the scapes themselves are excellent cooked.
Do not over-fertilize late. Nitrogen early in spring supports leaf growth, which matters because each leaf corresponds to a wrapper layer on the bulb, but feeding late pushes soft growth that stores poorly.
Harvest and curing
Harvest when the lower leaves have started to brown but half or slightly more than half of the leaves are still green, usually sometime in July. Waiting for all the leaves to brown is the classic mistake: the wrappers break down and the bulb splits apart in storage. Timing is more critical for hardneck than softneck, since hardnecks are likelier to split in the ground.
Loosen the soil beside the row and lift the bulbs rather than pulling on the stems, which snap. Do not wash them and do not leave them in direct sun.
Cure for three to four weeks somewhere shaded with good airflow, hung in bunches or laid on a rack. Once the necks are dry and the outer wrappers are papery, trim the roots and cut the stems, or braid softnecks. Store somewhere cool and dry, and not in the refrigerator, which encourages sprouting.
Common questions
When should you plant garlic?
In fall, four to six weeks before the ground freezes hard. That is late September through October in northern regions and October into November further south. Spring planting works but produces distinctly smaller bulbs.
How deep do you plant garlic?
Two inches deep in mild climates and three to four inches where winters are cold, pointed end up. The extra depth in cold regions protects against frost heave pushing cloves out of the soil.
Can you plant garlic from the grocery store?
You can, but it usually disappoints. Supermarket garlic is often treated to resist sprouting, is typically a softneck variety that may not suit a cold climate, and can introduce allium diseases to your soil. Seed garlic from a grower is a better investment, and you can replant your own after the first year.
How far apart should garlic be planted?
About six inches between cloves with rows roughly twelve inches apart. Garlic occupies the bed for nine months, so crowding it costs noticeable bulb size.
When is garlic ready to harvest?
When the lower leaves have browned but half or slightly more than half are still green, usually in July. Leaving it until all the leaves brown causes the wrappers to deteriorate and the bulbs to split, which ruins storage life. Hardneck varieties are less forgiving about this than softneck.
