Grow Great Garlic!

Most gardeners might be tempted to clean up their garden and stow their tools about this time of year. But if you enjoy cooking with fresh herbs and vegetables, you’ll want to plant garlic now for a harvest next summer. Garlic offers culinary versatility in the kitchen and is a staple of many ethnic dishes. I use it in soups, in stir-fries, with roasted vegetables, pork and chicken, and many other dishes. A head of roasted buttery garlic spread on fresh crusty French bread is one of our favorites (recipe below).

Garlic is a member of the genus Allium, which includes chives, onions, shallots and leeks. It’s an underground bulb (also called a head) made up of anywhere between 8 and 20 cloves depending on the variety. Plant the individual cloves now and each one will mature into a head of garlic by next summer. If you live in an area where the ground freezes, plant garlic at least three weeks before that happens. For average minimum temperatures in your area, visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Plant Hardiness Map.

Several hundred garlic cultivars are grown in the United States, but as many as half of them are genetically identical according to a study published in the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science. Soil, water, location, climate and other factors can influence the flavor of each garlic bulb. Taste and color may vary, too, depending on where the garlic is grown. And, the flavor of one variety may taste different from one garden to another.

Planting

Choose a spot that receives full sun (at least six hours) from spring through summer–garlic won’t grow in shade. Plant the cloves in fertile, well-drained soil, placing them 3 to 4 inches apart and 2 to 4 inches deep. I plant them in a four-foot-square raised bed, which helps keep the soil from becoming waterlogged during heavy rains. On weeks when we don’t have adequate rainfall, I’ll keep the plants watered–don’t let the soil become too dry or the garlic heads may be small at harvest time.

I plant the smallest garlic cloves in a separate row so I can pick the leaves like green onions. We harvest one or two leaves from each of the rest of the plants in spring and use them as garlic greens or garlic “grass,” a delicate gourmet addition to many dishes, especially on salads or tossed on soup.