Guides · 7 min read
Plant garlic in October
The crop that works while you rest. Seed garlic, not the grocery bin. Point up, mulch, wait until June.
Why fall, not spring
Garlic wants a winter. Cloves planted in October root before the ground locks, sit under mulch, and bulk up in the long days of late spring. Spring-planted garlic usually makes a small round — a clove, not a bulb.
In most of the country that means four to six weeks before first frost. In the Midwest that is October. In the South you can wait into November. In zone 9 and warmer, choose softnecks and do not count on a hard freeze to vernalize.
Seed garlic, not grocery garlic
Supermarket bulbs are often treated so they do not sprout, or grown for a climate that is not yours. Buy seed garlic from a seed house. Music is the hardneck that sizes up in cold winters. Softnecks braid and store, and they are the honest pick south of zone 7.
Split the bulb into cloves the day you plant. Keep the wrappers on. Largest cloves make the largest bulbs. The tiny inners are kitchen garlic.
The hole
Point up, two inches deep, six inches apart, in a row you can actually mulch. A 4×8 bed holds a lot of garlic. Water it in. Cover with three inches of leaves or straw. That is the crop until June.
Harvest when the lower half of the leaves have browned. Cure in dry shade with air, not in a plastic bin. Then it feeds you until the next October.
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