See, garlic is easy to grow en masse because I give it very little dedicated garden space, very little time, and no water. Garlic goes around all my fruit trees as mulch that keeps out the grass rhizomes, so it actually saves me time by keeping out weeds I don’t want. It also goes right outside of garden beds to serve the same purpose.
Otherwise, I just sort of stick it wherever I have a spare spot for the winter. And I don’t water it, either. The rain, what little we have, does sufficient of that. Really, the only effort garlic takes is:
Harvesting it.
Separating the cloves into the ones I plan to replant and the ones I plan to eat.
Preparing the ones I want to eat.
Replanting the ones I want to plant.
. . . And seriously, that’s it.
Well, I guess I do weed the garlic, but only insofar as I am trying to get rid of everything inedible, no matter where it volunteers. I keep all the edible weeds I like the taste of, so if salsify or blue mustard or amaranth or cutleaf vipergrass or my now-feral lettuce shows up somewhere, I rarely pull it out.
By the way, in case you’re curious about how I prepare the cloves to eat: I prefer garlic powder to fresh garlic, so I do a giant batch once a year where I peel all the cloves to eat, grind them into a small chunks, dry them out in the sun, use my blender to turn the dried chunks into powder, and pour that powder into empty parmesean cheese bottles. Those are perfect as a nice, big, convenient shaker to shake copious amounts of garlic powder onto everything.
I actually was curious about how you prepare the cloves you eat! I do my best to keep most garlic heads whole for better preservation since i like using fresh garlic, but inevitably have to break em apart to sort the biggest cloves for planting. So far my garlic has kept really well and i have 11 heads left before this years harvest! I look forward to using garlic more freely because i love copious amounts of it in everything.
How large do your garlic heads turn out at the end of the year with minimal input? Im never too picky or competitive about harvest size but im hoping to have decent sized heads this year. I dont water too regularly but i did put down a layer of horsemanure/woodchip mulch ontop of the garlic about a month ago. Barely keeping up with weeding but that’s because i was a little ambitious with garden size and toddler juggling im telling myself my lack of watering and weeding is amplifying my seed adaptation hahaha
Thanks for more ideas of where to squeeze in more garlic! I plant em along the edge of my garden rows but then it is kinda awkward trying to get into the middle for planting and weeding, so planting on the edge of my fruit trees sounds like something I’ll try out. I planted melon along the edges of my fruit trees hoping the pokey leaves and vines will discourage raccoons from climbing up em.
My garlic heads vary a great deal in size, based on both the side of the clove I planted in that spot and the microclimate it’s in. They range everywhere from three inches in diameter (the largest size of head I’ve ever seen at the grocery store — this only happens if it was an enormous clove) to half an inch in diameter (which only happens if it was a tiny clove — I rarely plant those on purpose, but it’s common for me to miss a head of garlic that then promptly grows all of its cloves into new heads the next year).
I’d say most of my garlic heads are somewhere between 1.5 to 2.5 inches in diameter. Often a bit smaller than a grocery store head (they tend to range from between 2 to 3 inches in diameter), but not by that much. Since I replant all my largest cloves, I’d say I probably save about a third of the mass of my total garlic harvest in order to replant.
I’d say maybe around two-thirds of the intensity of garlic flavor gets lost when it’s dehydrated, so the fact that everybody in my family seems to strongly prefer powdered garlic to fresh probably contributes to just how much garlic I need to grow. But since it’s a zero-input crop that I mostly tuck into spaces where I wouldn’t want anything else growing anyway (such as around fruit trees), and the caloric value doesn’t go down when it’s powdered, there’s no real opportunity cost lost in eating it that way.
I consider garlic a very promising staple crop; it’s one of the most consistent and reliable producers for me. The only downside to it as a staple is that it has a strong flavor, so diminishing that flavor by powdering it means we can eat way more of it, which is a good thing if we might want to eat loads of it for calories in a survival situation. (The flavor is delicious, of course; it’s just that it would become unpleasantly overpowering if you were trying to use it as a big source of calories.)
Oh, yeah, it’s worth mentioning that I do mulch my garlic — I doubt it would do nearly as well if I didn’t. I don’t really consider that an input per se, though, because I mulch everywhere, including the pathways.
I’ve had good success dehydrating and powdering the garlic scapes (none of mine produce true seed). The powder is green and sweeter than plain garlic powder, but I’ve found it’s a good way to preserve scapes since they all mature around the same time and I grow way more than I want to eat at once. I use it as seasoning in soups and marinades/dry rubs. Experimented with garlic scape pesto and found it too strong for my taste.
I often reach a point in the spring where any remaining cloves of my shorter storing varieties want to sprout and I’ve had good luck fermenting those either in honey or as a lacto-ferment. This preserves them in a usable form for years.
Good to know about the size range of your garlic! I had quite the variety in size last year, probably pretty similiar to yours. The big ones are super satisfying to witness after yanking out of the soil! I grow hardneck varieties and started with red russian, now including some musik that was generously given to us from some friends. The musik garlic heads were massive in comparison to my red russian so im hoping it’ll grow just as large in my garden.. only time will tell! I planted a few cloves in my front yard and will be leaving them in ground until next year to see what it is like to pull out multi-heads all at once. Id like to perennialize some garlic.
I absolutely agree with garlic being a staple crop but for me it is more so to do with the medicinal properties and flavour enhancement, as opposed to the calorie intake. Ive never actually looked into garlic calories but assumed it was fairly low.. correct me if im wrong!
And yes, sorry for not clarifying, i assumed you mulched your garlic… I think that is fairly standard! What i meant was i used the horse manure mulch as a source of fertilizer for my garlic, that is why i mentioned it. My bad for being confusing!
Garlic scape powder sounds brilliant.. yum! Last year I made an excellent delicious batch of sourdough scape and cheddar scones so im very excited for a bigger scape harvest coming up soon. I too have experimented with scape pesto and find it far too pungent for my tastebuds. I think it might be good to use as a wet rub or toned down with some nasturtium/kale/spinach/basil or something but definitely not a traditional pesto substitute for pasta or sandwiches in my opinion!
It is wonderful that you have extra cloves for fermenting! I plan to do exactly that (im especially excited to try garlic infused honey) but want to wait until I have this years harvest available before i start goin all gung-ho with the last of my precious alliums haha
P.s. love the mason jar spice collection! I do the same thing. Mason jars for everything >_<
I am enjoying growing garlic so much that I bought a few cultivars from Garlicana last year. He was super kind and accomodating — I will probably order more from him this fall. It’s a bit of a nuisance to order from him because he only accepts personal checks through the mail, but being able to get some of his wonderful fertile garlics that are capable of making true seeds makes it well worth that bother, I think.
Right now, three of the cultivars he sent me are making scapes, and I’m very excited. Hopefully I’ll be able to save some true garlic seeds soon! I assume I’ll need to plant them all this fall, since allium seeds have such a short viability window.
Those Garlicana cultivars are in a special patch of their own, so I won’t mix them up with the rest. I also have a few tiny plants of Extra Hardy German that grew from bulbils I got in a trade with somebody two years ago. Together those represent . . . maybe 1% of the garlic I’m growing? All the rest of my 2,000 or so garlics came straight from the grocery store. I would love to be able to transition fully over to a population of highly diverse, fertile garlic that I can keep on breeding to find new traits that delight me, but since I’m far from that goal right now, the infertile-but-still-delicious grocery store softneck garlics are just fine!
I know, right? Especially since the leaves are edible, so there’s some part of the garlic you can harvest to eat fresh from the garden at any time of the year, if you want to.
I’m sorry to hear you’ve had issues with garlic in two different places! Wow, I’ve never even heard of white rot; I’m guessing it’s one of those diseases that shows up in humid places that I never see here because it’s way too dry?
Man, I’m sorry to hear you have animal pests eating your garlic. Perhaps it may be worthwhile to look up which insects eats leek moths, and what kinds of habitats they like to have to overwinter in? Maybe encouraging more of those to move in could help keep your leek moth population at an acceptable level.
Oooh im sure it is worth every little hassle there is to receive fertile garlic.. that is so cool! I gope you get some garlic seeds successfully right off the bat. Planting in the fall makes sense because i feel like they would benefit from a stratification period. But i have no knowledge behind that, just my own hunch haha
Slow transitions are rewarding as time goes on but like you say, im sure grocery store garlic is just as good n delicious. Just having a big garlic harvest is so satisfying! First time i grew garlic years ago i tried out grocery store cloves but it didnt work out very well. All grocery store garlic is softneck for the most part and everyone in my region grows hardneck so once i made that change things were a lot better. Maybe the techniques are a bit different, i dunno!
Last fall when i planted for this year, i experimented with different timing to see which bulbs grow best/biggest so I’m getting some early scapes which is wonderful.. i made some garlic scape chip dip since there was only a few to use up. Gobbled that up so fast heheh.
Planting garlic in the fall is more than just beneficial in my climate . . . it’s essential! It grows through the winter, and will not grow through the summer. (I mean, I can plant garlic any time of the year I want, but if I plant it in the spring or summer, it won’t sprout any sooner than mid August, and it usually prefers to wait until late October.)
Right now, most of my garlic is dying down for the summer, which means I will be harvesting the heads soon. I can replant right away if I want to, but I usually take a few weeks to get everything sorted; I don’t have to rush, because it won’t make any difference if the cloves are planted in June or in September.
Based on the descriptions of the flavors of the garlics I chose from Garlicana, I am hoping they will be even tastier than grocery store garlic! But grocery store garlic is, of course, delicious enough to eat it in copious quantities. I haven’t tried them yet, because I planted all the cloves I got from him last fall; I’ll probably taste the littlest cloves this fall, and replant all the rest to help a bigger patch keep propagating. I hope they will be fabulous!
How interesting! So hardneck garlics do well in your climate, and softneck ones don’t? That implies hardnecks are more cold tolerant. (I assume your Canadian winters are cold.) Does garlic grow through the winter for you, like it does for me, or is it a summer crop in your climate?
shows up somewhere, I rarely pull it out.
im telling myself my lack of watering and weeding is amplifying my seed adaptation hahaha
But since it’s a zero-input crop that I mostly tuck into spaces where I wouldn’t want anything else growing anyway (such as around fruit trees), and the caloric value doesn’t go down when it’s powdered, there’s no real opportunity cost lost in eating it that way.
It’s a bit of a nuisance to order from him because he only accepts personal checks through the mail, but being able to get some of his wonderful fertile garlics that are capable of making true seeds makes it well worth that bother, I think.
All the rest of my 2,000 or so garlics came straight from the grocery store.