Planting Garlic at My Farm

November 13, 2017

Our big fall planting project continues at my Bedford, New York farm.

With the arrival of our first hard frost and several cold and windy days, everyone is rushing to get all the bulbs in the ground. Among our tasks - planting next season's crop of garlic. Although this can be done in the spring as soon as the ground can be worked, fall planting is recommended for most gardeners. This allows extra time for the garlic bulbs to grow and become more flavorful for the summer harvest. We planted a lot of garlic from Keene Organics, a family owned farm in Wisconsin that sells certified organic and naturally grown gourmet bulbs for both eating and planting. Garlic is great for cooking and very good for your health. It is known to lower blood pressure as well as cholesterol, and carries many antioxidant properties. Knowing that I also grow the garlic myself makes it even more special.

Enjoy these photos.

: It’s always exciting to get a box from Keene Organics filled with a variety of garlic bulbs for my garden. The box comes complete with an informational pamphlet explaining how to prepare and plant the garlic. https://www.keeneorganics.com

: When planting garlic, look for the largest most robust bulbs. Most of the netted packs have about three or four bulbs in each. Each bulb contains at least four to six cloves – some even more.

: Ryan prepares the garlic for planting. He cracks each bulb and separates all the cloves. He does this carefully, so as not to damage any of them. After all of the garlic heads are separated, Ryan groups the cloves with other similar varieties. For the best results, plant the largest cloves from each bulb and save the smaller ones for eating.

: Ryan places the garlic in separate plastic containers, keeping all the labels near each type for easy identification.

: Some of the varieties we’re planting this year include Inchelium Red, a national softneck taste-test winner. It’s a mild flavored garlic that’s great baked, roasted, and nicely blended with mashed potatoes.

: German Red is grown for its wonderful classic garlic flavor. It has large impressive bulbs for great market appeal and seems to store longers than most rocambole varieties. Its taste is strong, medium hot, and great roasted, sautéed, or raw.

: These Montana Giant-Porcelain garlic cloves are easy to grow, and are slightly spicy but not overpowering.

: Georgian Crystal-Porcelain has a medium rich flavor that’s extremely popular among growers.

: Pehoski Purple-Marbled Purple Stripe is a hardneck that’s hot when eaten raw and more mild and earthy in taste after it is cooked. This is an heirloom garlic grown in the Polish community in Wisconsin. It’s an all-purpose garlic for baking and sautéing.

: Asian Tempest-Asiatic is very hot when eaten raw and sweet when baked. It tastes rich, garlicky, strong, and robust with easy to peel jumbo cloves.

: The Music Porcelain garlic is easy to grow. Raw, this garlic is very hot-flavored, but it mellows when it is baked or roasted.

: Metechi-Purple Stripe are easy to grow, with a hot, fire flavor.

: Italian Red Porcelain garlic also has a hot garlic flavor. It grows well in northern regions and is a longer storing variety.

: Vietnamese Red-Purple Stripe is beautiful garlic with purple stripes. It is a wonderful roasting and sauteing garlic.

: The Chesnok Red-Purple Stripe garlic is an heirloom variety. It is loved for its rich flavor as an all-purpose cooking garlic. It’s also well known as a superb baking garlic.

: The German Extra Hardy Porcelain garlic is large-sized and medium flavored. Because of its large root system, this hardneck is extremely hardy and often withstands freezing and thawing cycles when other garlic varieties don’t.

: Chamisal Wild-Rocambole are hardneck, very hardy, large-sized cloves with an earthy sweet flavor – it’s a true heirloom garlic and has grown wild in the Southwest for many years.

: Purple Glazier-Purple Stripe is an heirloom garlic passed down through generations in the Polish community in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. In the 1980s, it was named Pehoski Purple by John Swenson, a leader and advisor at Seed Savers Exchange. Its taste is intense when raw and gets milder into an earthy garlic flavor when roasted and sautéed.

: Amish Rocambole is robust and very hardy. It grows well in Northern States, and has large impressive bulbs with flavor that’s deep, full bodied, and medium hot.

: Ryan soaks the garlic in isopropyl or rubbing alcohol, for about 20-minutes. This helps to sterilize the cloves. If you don’t have alcohol, you can also use hydrogen peroxide or vodka.

: After the garlic soaks in alcohol, Ryan removes the liquid and then pours a bit of fish emulsion into each container. This is an organic garden fertilizer that’s made from whole fish or parts of fish. It’s easy to find at garden centers or wherever gardening supplies and fertilizers are sold.

: Each container also gets a bit of baking soda.

: Finally, Ryan fills the containers with the baking soda water to ensure all the garlic is covered in solution.

: The cloves are all left to soak in the baking soda and fish emulsion mixture overnight.

: The next morning, Ryan uses a sieve to remove all the liquid.

: The cloves are allowed to drain for a few minutes – this process takes some time, but ensures all the liquid is removed.

: Meanwhile, here is where the garlic will be planted – in a fertilized field behind my main greenhouse.

: All the containers filled with garlic are brought outside – each one with a garden marker listing its garlic variety.

: Wilmer uses twine to make sure all the cloves are spaced evenly. Doing this creates straight, pretty rows, but it is also important to give each clove enough room to grow and develop. They should be planted at least several inches from each other.

: To make the holes for planting garlic, use a dibble or a dibber. This is a T-dibber. The T-grip allows the planter to apply enough pressure to create a consistent depth for each hole.

: The dibber is perfect for planting garlic. Cloves should be at least two to three inches deep. Be sure to plant the tip of the clove faced up, and the root side faced down.

: When planting multiple rows of garlic, be sure the rows are at least one-foot apart. The majority of garlic in the US is planted from mid-October through November, several weeks before the ground freezes. Once the garlic clove is in the hole, simply back fill the hole.