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I have some glorious garlic from an organic csa farm to which we subscribe. I've done a little reading on the web about growing garlic at home, but does anyone have actual experience? My plan would be to grow them in a big planter. Any specific ideas/methods would be deeply appreciated!

Big Daddy

I have never tried, but I do not imagine garlic, or any other plant, would like the extreme temperature changes you would have in a container over the course of a winter. However, give it a try, what have you got to lose?

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i used to milk cows

Normally garlic is planted in the late autumn to early winter. One old saw is to plant garlic on the shortest day of the year and harvest on the longest day. Good luck on trying that in the Chicago area as the ground is usually frozen by then. Our own crop rotation has garlic following some tomatoes, which usually works pretty well as I can normally spade under the chopped tomato vines and mulch in time for some composting in place before planting the garlic in late November. I mulch the garlic with a couple of inches of chopped leaves once the first inch or so of soil is frozen. Garlic puts out some roots before going dormant as the ground freezes deeper. Trying to grow garlic in any kind of planter box strikes me as quite risky because of the freeze-thaw temperature fluctuations.

Most stiff-necked garlic is hardy in the Chicago area. Locally grown garlic will be stiff-neck, but supermarket garlic may be soft neck that will not survive a Chicago winter.

A few of us on this forum use SIPs (sub irrigated planters) with much success. I use the earthbox but you can make your own or buy competing products.

Here's a link to the Earthbox forum on growing garlic in the EBs. There seems to be some success here as well as some good advice. Keep us posted: http://forum.earthbox.com/index.php?topic=2436.0

The ones in the forum cited above are in much milder climates than Chicago. Even the OP in that thread is in a less severe climate, so I would not extrapolate very far. Even a large planter box will freeze solid in a Chicago winter but may thaw a good deal in a January thaw and then refreeze.

The forum cited also notes that their particular results may not work for colder climates. The link was meant to provide a little more perspective on growing in a container. Take from it what you can before making your decision to grow in a container...

Garlic is IMHO one of the easiest plants to grow. It isn't very picky about when it is planted and you can eat the greens, scapes and bulbs so it produces edibles over a long growing season.

Plant it in the fall in fairly well drained soil. Right now would be a good time if we hadn't just experienced a deluge

Wait a couple of days for your garden to dry out and drop a few cloves in the ground. In the spring, snip the greens to use as chives then let the flowers appear. Snip off all but a couple of scapes to eat. Let the scapes go to seed and use them to replant next year. Don't forget to dig the bulbs after the flower stalks have dried and before they sprout again in the fall.

I've had garlic in my garden for nearly 15 years this way. I use raised beds to improve drainage because our yard soil has a lot of clay. Other than that, I pretty much ignore the plant most of the time. Except for eating it of course.

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"The only thing I have to eat is Yoo-hoo and Cocoa puffs so if you want anything else, you have to bring it with you."