PlantFiles: Common Garlic
Allium sativum

Planting garlic is terribly easy. Something to dig with is all you need to get started. If you have a speed drill, planting garlic will be a breeze!

Attach a paddle bit to your speed drill. Use a size that will allow the garlic width to fit into the hole you will produce by using the bit. For example, most common garlic cloves are generally not over 1”
wide, so you could use a paddle bit of that size. Drill a hole three times as deep as the clove is long. It is easier to drill all of your holes, then plant. Once your holes are all drilled, push just a bit of the soil back into the hole, then push the garlic clove into the hole.

You’ll want to plant the clove so that the flat end is down in the hole and the little pointy part is sticking up. Press the surrounding soil back into place, but not too tightly, just enough to fill in the hole. If you have chickens or know someone who has them, put a good heaping scoop of chicken litter on top of the soil, then water well. I always plant my garlic with chicken litter and they absolutely jump out of the ground in less than a week.

Be sure to keep the area well watered, but not soggy. Plant in early spring or in fall. When the garlic is ready, it will look like your plants are dying. Relax, you’ve done nothing wrong, you grew garlic!

Dig up the garlic, allow to dry completely and store in a cool, dry spot. If it is too warm or moist, the garlic will begin growing. Don’t be surprised to find the garlic growing in your refrigerator. If it reaches that stage, simply dig another hole, plant it and harvest another batch at the end of the season.

I read that garlic was a good companion plant for both roses and fruit trees, so when I saw a big fat bulb that was starting to show little green sprouts at a local grocery store this Fall, I brought it home, broke it up and poked the little cloves into the soil around my two antique rose bushes and around the trunk of my Brown Turkey fig, which are in the same bed. The garlic is suppose to repel pests from both the roses and any fruit trees.

I was quite surprised at how fast the garlic shot up out of the ground and reached a height of a foot or more in less than six weeks. It has survived our few frosts--the lowest at my place has been 28, so far, here in Northcentral Florida, zone 8b, We had a wonderfully long Indian Summer, and even the Winter has been quite mild--again, so far.

Planting garlic or onions are a great and safe way to keep gophers away from your garden plants.

Garlic is one of the simplest plants to grow. Plant the clove an inch or less beneath the soil in fall. New leaves will appear before winter, then in the spring they will grow quickly to 18" tall. Bulbs are ready to harvest when the leaves start to brown.

Garlic does not flower; some varieties form a flower stalk that produces bulblets in the summer. These can be eaten or planted. Allowing the flower stalk to remain can reduce the quality of the flowering bulb.