Growing Garlic at Home

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?

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.

ekreider wrote: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.

It's been about 10 days since we 'harvested' our November 2022 garlic planting. Not spectacular but respectable . . .


2023 Homegrown Garlic Harvest

Not the hugest heads but much better than in the past. Considering the size of what was growing above ground in May/June, I was expecting some gargantuan heads. That didn't happen but most of these are still very nice. From what I've read, head size mostly comes down to the size of the cloves planted. We sourced/planted some decently-sized stuff last fall -- a mix of organic varieties -- but will try to buy even bigger stock this year. This stuff probably needs another few days to cure, after which we'll trim it, clean it up, etc.

=R=

No vampires in the Suburban household.

Beautiful crop, congrats!

Look at this crazy 'head' of garlic I harvested from the patch in my backyard! I've never seen anything quite like this before . . .





In case you can't tell from my pictures - the whole head was one single clove

- zorkmead

I have seen that single clove structure in some spring-planted garlic. This was garlic that matured with insufficient growing season before forming bulbs.

Since the leaves had dried out and turned brown, it was time to harvest the garlic in the back yard. (I cut off the garlic scapes earlier this spring — made a great garlic pesto.)


Didn’t get a great harvest, but left the garlic to cure for a few weeks. I’ll save some of the larger cloves, and plant them this fall for next year.

Does anyone have recommendations for buying seed garlic?

I have an inquiry into Gateway Garlic, and am waiting to hear back. I also see seed garlic available from Johnny’s Seed.

LHS wrote:Does anyone have recommendations for buying seed garlic?

The best garlic I've ever grown in Chicago was the Music variety from Bakers Creek. I've got the third generation waiting to be planted, and I adore it... big fat cloves that are easy to peel and really delicious.

LHS wrote:Does anyone have recommendations for buying seed garlic?

Garlic Underground has these at Evanston and a number of other farmers' markets, but any stiff neck garlic can be planted in the fall — the bigger the cloves, the better. Plant 'em pointy side up, an inch or two deep. Better to get the stiff neck garlic from a farmers' market — often the supermarket varieties are treated to prevent sprouting, and the supermarket stuff rarely specifies the variety (Music and German Red are good varieties).

Ive bought seed garlic from a variety of places and all produced nicely—Johnny’s, Renee’s Garden, and probably others I’m not remembering. This year I’m going to try some of my own as well since I planted a lot more.

I usually plant 2” deep, 4” apart and the rows a foot apart so that you don’t trample them when weeding, cutting the scapes or harvesting. I use an old broom handle to make the holes and another with notches for the spacing —saves my back and keeps things uniform.

I plant end of October, 1st week of November and harvest early July, after which I plant pumpkins (didn’t this year because my garlic/pumpkin patch became a sunflower farm and I’ve had so much trouble with squash bugs, I decided to take a break). Harvest the pumpkins in September/October and repeat!

I do absolutely nothing to them after planting other than covering with an inch or two of straw. I start watering in spring when I put in the rest of my spring veg if it’s dry. Probably one of the lowest maintenance crops I grow.

I also experimented this year with planting around the perimeter of some of my raised beds and the garlic did even better than in ground (almost certainly because it’s better soil and probably a bit looser). Didn’t notice any particular pest control benefits.

Good luck!