Garlic Needs a Fall Start

Garlic may be a little stinker but it grows well in cool-season gardens. Often plantings are started as a curiosity but many gardeners like to keep home grown garlic handy for cooking and to make extracts said to discourage bugs.

Garlic

Common and elephant garlic are planted in home gardens. They are normally started from large bulbs obtained form saved crops, food stores or garden centers. Sections of the bulbs called cloves are broken apart for planting.

Sunny sites enriched with organic matter and manure should be prepared and planted during fall. The cloves can be lined out in a row or spaced six inches apart across a wide bed. Planting is easy as each clove is just pushed about 2 inches deep into the loose, well-tilled soil.
Use the following tips to produce a crops that ready to harvest in May.

	Keep the soil moist watering every 3 to 4 days.
	Feed every other month with a balanced fertilizer.
	Control weeds with a thin layer of mulch.
	Keep elephant garlic from blooming by removing the flower stalks.
	Harvest the bulbs when the stems start to yellow and collapse.