How To Grow Garlic

Home grown garlic's absolutely fantastic, and it's really easy to grow as long as you follow a few basic rules. Garlic is part of the allium family, which includes onions, and leeks, and shallots. If you follow the rules about growing onions, it's pretty much the same for growing garlic.

Garlic is grown from the individual cloves, which make up a bulb of garlic. And I always buy my garlic bulbs from the garden center, rather than relying on those that I get from the supermarket. Garlic, like onions, requires really good sun and drainage.

If you haven't got good drainage on your plot or if you just want to be absolutely sure, what I always do is dig in a bag of sharp sand in the garlic bed before I plant it. If a garlic sits in water or winter, it will rot. That's one of the main diseases that can wipe out your garlic crop.

You can plant garlic in the spring, but I've had much more success by putting mine in about the middle of October. Dig over the bed to at least the space depth. As I said before, put some sharp sand in to get the drainage working properly and then add a couple of handfuls of fish blood and bone, and rake it in every square meter or so.

Plant the garlic bulbs upright. That's with their pointed end up and the blunt end down. Plant the bulbs one inch deep, four inches apart, and if you're planting more than one row, plant the rows about eighteen inches apart.

To plant the garlic coves, separate them from the bulb, but don't remove the skin. They like a fertile soil, so give them an extra bit of general purpose fertilizer like fish blood and bone marrow in May. Weed them regularly.

Garlic, like onions, doesn't have a big leaf kind of piece, so it can't suppress its own weeds. So you must keep the plants free of weeds and don't water them too much. Just like onions, they will bolt and go to seed.

They're ready for harvesting when the leaves have turned brown and have dyed back. Harvest the bulbs and leave them to dry. You can also eat the garlic when it's what's called "wet".

That's fresh. It's very tasty and not so strong. But if you're drying it, make sure it's properly dried before you store it or it will rot.

Garlic has natural fungicidal and insecticidal properties, and can make a great companion to other crops. |This VideoJug film shows you how to grown garlic in your garden step by step. Follow this 3-minute tutorial for helpful tips and what to avoid when planting garlic.