Garlic is an easy-to-grow crop. Beyond its intense flavor and culinary uses, “the stinking rose” is also good in the garden as an insect repellent and has been used for centuries as a home remedy. Unlike many crops, garlic is usually planted in autumn—and then harvested in midsummer. See our Growing Guide to Garlic for planting, growing, and harvesting tips.
Growing Garlic
Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Garlic
Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Garlic
Planting
When to Plant Garlic
The dates to plant garlic vary widely. To grow big garlic bulbs, we typicall plant the cloves in late autumn. Garlic roots develop during the fall and winter—before the ground freezes—and by early spring, they start producing foliage. Then, you’ll harvest in the summer.
The aim is to allow a long enough period before the ground freezes for the plant to develop good roots, but not enough time to for it to form top growth before freezing temperatures set in.
- In cooler climates, planting is usually between September and November.
- If you have a long growing season, you can also plant the cloves in the spring as soon as the ground can be worked. However, we still prefer fall planting because the heads grow larger.
- If you live in the South or Southwest, plant the cloves anytime from the fall through early spring (March). Plant early because garlic doesn’t do well once the weather gets hot.
Choosing and Preparing a Planting Site
- Select a sunny spot.
- Garlic likes fertile, well-drained soil with a pH of 6.5 to 7. If your soil is on the thin, sandy side, add healthy additions of compost, plus aged manure or 5-10-10 fertilizer. (Don’t use fresh, unprocessed animal manure, as it can transfer diseases.)
- For an easy and large harvest, garlic grower Robin Jarry of Hope, Maine, suggests using heavily mulched raised beds, especially in heavy soil. “I plant in raised beds for good drainage, and then mulch with about six inches of old hay after the ground freezes. I never water my garlic—I like low-maintenance vegetables!” Raised beds should be two to three feet wide and at least 10 to 12 inches tall.
- Lime the soil if you haven’t done so recently. Before planting cloves, work a couple tablespoons of 5-10-10 complete fertilizer, bone meal or fish meal into the soil several inches below where the base of the garlic will rest.
How to Plant Garlic
- Get cloves from a mail order seed company or a local nursery.
- Do not use cloves from the grocery store for planting. They may be unsuitable varieties for your area, and most are treated to make their shelf life longer, making them harder to grow.
- Select large, healthy cloves, free of disease. The larger the clove, the bigger and healthier the bulb you will get the following summer.
- Break apart cloves from the bulb a few days before planting, but keep the papery husk on each individual clove.
- Place cloves 2 to 4 inches apart and 2 inches deep, in their upright position (the wide root side facing down and pointed end facing up).
- Plant in rows spaced 10 to 14 inches apart.
See how we plant garlic in the fall.
Check out this video to learn how to plant garlic.
Care
How to Grow Garlic
- Northern gardeners should mulch heavily with straw to ensure proper overwintering. Read our mulching guide for more info!
- Mulch should be removed in the spring after the threat of frost has passed. (Young shoots can’t survive in temps below 20°F / -6°C on their own. Keep them under cover.)
- In the spring, as warmer temperatures come, shoots will emerge through the ground.
- Cut off any flower shoots that emerge in spring. These may decrease bulb size.
- Fertilize garlic in the early spring by side dressing with a nitrogen-heavy fertilizer such as blood meal, chicken manure, or a store-bought pelleted fertilizer.
- Fertilize again just before the bulbs begin to swell in response to lengthening daylight (usually early May in most regions).
- Weeds should not be a problem until spring. However, keep the planting site well weeded. Garlic doesn’t do well with competition—it needs all available nutrients!
- Garlic is a heavy feeder which requires adequate levels of nitrogen. Fertilize more if you see yellowing leaves.
- Water every 3 to 5 days during bulbing (mid-May through June). If May and June are very dry, irrigate to a depth of two feet every eight to 10 days. As mid-June approaches, taper off watering.
Pests/Diseases
Garlic has very few problems with pests in the garden (in fact, its a natural pest repellent), and also very few problems with the diseases that plague other veggies. White rot is one concern, but you should also keep an eye out for the same pests that plague onions.
- White Rot is a fungus that may attack garlic in cool weather. Not much can be done to control or prevent that problem except rotating your crops and cleaning up the area after harvesting. The spores can live in the soil for many years. The fungus affects the base of the leaves and roots.
Harvest/Storage
How to Harvest Garlic
- Harvest from fall plantings will range from late June to August. In Southern climates, it will depend on your planting date. The clue is to look for yellowing foliage. Harvest when the tops just begin to yellow and fall over, but before they are completely dry.
- Before digging up your whole crop, it’s time for a sample! Lift a bulb to see if the crop is ready. We often dig up a bulb before the tops are completely yellow (in late June or early July) as some garlic types will be ready earlier. The garlic head will be divided into plump cloves and the skin covering the outside of the bulbs will be thick, dry and papery.
- If pulled too early, the bulb wrapping will be thin and disintegrate.
- If left in the ground too long, the bulbs sometimes split apart. The skin may also split, which exposes the bulbs to disease and will affect their longevity in storage.
- To harvest, carefully dig (don’t pull!) up the bulbs with a spade or garden fork. Lift the plants, carefully brush off the soil, and let them cure in an airy, shady, dry spot for two weeks. We hang them upside down on a string in bunches of 4 to 6. Make sure all sides get good air circulation. Be careful not to bruise the garlic or it won’t store well.
How to Store Garlic
- The bulbs are cured and ready to store when the wrappers are dry and papery and the roots are dry. The root crown should be hard, and the cloves can be cracked apart easily.
- Once the garlic bulbs are dry, you can store them. Remove any dirt and trim off any roots or leaves. Keep the wrappers on—but remove the dirtiest wrappers. Remove the tops and roots.
- Bulbs should be stored in a cool (40°F / 4°C), dark, dry place, and can be kept in the same way for several months. Don’t store in your basement if it’s moist! Do not store garlic in the refrigerator, either.
- The flavor will increase as the bulbs are dried. Properly stored, garlic should last until the next crop is harvested the following summer.
- If you plan on planting garlic again next season, save some of your largest, best-formed bulbs to plant again in the fall.
Recommended Varieties
What type of garlic should you plant? There are two main types of garlic: Softneck and Hardneck.
- Hardneck varieties are extremely cold hardy so opt for these if your winters are harsh. They produce “scapes” or flower stems which must be removed to encourage the bulbs to reach their full potential. The scapes themselves are an early summer treat, delicious as chopped into salads or added to stir-fries. Hardnecks grow one ring of cloves around a stem, there is not a layer of cloves as there is in softneck varieties. While they are cold hardy, hardnecks do not store as well or long as other varieties. Flavor is milder than softnecks. Common hardneck types include ‘Korean Red’, ‘Duganski’, ‘Siberian’, ‘Music’, ‘Chesnok Red’, ‘German Red’ and ‘Spanish Roja’. These varieties produce tiny bulblets at the end of a tall flowering stalk in addition to a fat underground bulb of cloves.
- Softneck varieties, like their name suggests, have necks that stay soft after harvest, and therefore are the types that you see braided. Softnecks are especially recommended for those in warmer climes, as it is less winter-hardy than other types. They have strong, intense flavor and tend to grow bigger bulbs because energy is not being diverted to top-set bulblets like hardnecks. Softneck varieties include ‘Silverskin’, ‘Inchelium Red’, ‘California Early’ and ‘California Late’.
While not a true garlic, the enormous Great-headed (Elephant) garlic behaves like a hardneck type. Despite its size, it has quite a mild flavor. Most types are about 90 days to harvest, once growth starts.
- Great-headed (Elephant) garlic is not recommended if you’re looking for a garlic taste. It’s less hardy, and more closely related to leeks than other varieties. The flavor is more like onion than traditional garlic. Bulbs and cloves are large, with about 4 cloves to a bulb.
Wit & Wisdom
- Rub raw garlic on an insect bite to relieve the sting or itch. Find out more uses for raw garlic and more about garlic’s long history of healing.
A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat.
–Yiddish proverb
Recipes
Cooking Notes
- You can also harvest just the green scapes of hardneck garlic varieties. Harvest when the scape begin to curl (often around mid-June). This doesn’t hurt the bulb; in fact, the plant can put more energy into bulb formation. Use the scapes in cooking the same way you would garlic bulbs. We like to stir fry scapes the way we cook green beans—similar, with a spicy kick! Note that they get more fibrous and less edible as they mature.
- Learn how to make your own garlic powder to easily spice up a recipe.
- Roasted garlic bulbs are also a favorite of ours!
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Reader Comments
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Garlic seeds from top of plant
Can I plant the garlic seeds from the top of the stem in the fall to grow over winter?
garlic from seed
If by “seeds” you mean the bulbils at the top of the stem (that sort of look like mini bulbs) and often referred to as seeds, then yes, you can plant them in fall or spring. If you plant in spring, they will need to have a cold treatment first (place in a breathable bag in the fridge for a few weeks).
If you mean true seeds, you can save the true seeds, but they may not produce plants that are like the parent; the cloves or bulbils are what will be true to type. Not all garlic produces seeds, and those that do produce flowers, may not produce viable seed. If your seed heads are developing, but not mature, then you’ll need to sacrifice harvesting the bulb to let the seed head mature for seeds (which are harvested around October or so), or you can sever the seed stalk (scape) at the base of the plant and place it in water in a sunny location in the hope that it may still mature. It’s best to remove the bulbils early on from the scape (both bulbils and flowers will form at the top of the flower scape) to encourage better seed development from the flowers. The harvested seeds need a cold treatment before they are sown; you can place them in the refrigerator for a month or so over winter. When you sow the seeds in spring, it is likely that the germination rate will be very low for that first generation; successive generations improve. Also, that first round tends to produce problem plants, such as weaker or misshapen, but there’s also the possibility of some with desirable characteristics that you can go on to save further seed or cloves. Garlic is fussy, and has evolved so that it reproduces by cloves or bulbils more often than by seed, so propagating it this way may be a challenge, but could also be a fun experiment! Good luck!
planting year old garlic
I have a lot of garlic left over from the 2017 harvest. Is it too old to plant? I.e. can I use it to plant this fall, or do I have to use the garlic I just harvested?
last year's garlic
It depends. If the cloves are soft and dried out, of course, they are of no value. Often garlic heads “sprout” or send up greens. Some say that the individual cloves in the head can be planted. Depending on the cloves’ condition, you might have success—but plant a few from this year’s harvest (or buy a couple of heads at a farmer’s market) to know that you will have crop next year.
Garlic Scapes
I have experimented with growing on a couple of Garlic Scapes.... I let the Scapes of a couple of bulbs do their thing until the plant was almost done, just as the scape had started to peel, I took it and dried it for a while then split the Scape open, I've planted a couple of pots of the tiny garlic bulbs that came from the Scape, now I get 100's of tiny Garlic Plants that I use as Chives in all manner of ways, they are wonderful sprinkled over fluffy mashed potatoes or on top of fresh baked Pizza. . . oh and make brilliant dough balls, just chop finely and sprinkle into the dough before it's final knead. The best way I use is when I have a lot I trim off the garlic chives, chop finely and then add to a pound of clarified butter in a pan, once cooled enough I place in Ice Cube Trays and freeze, these work wonders for a bowl of Pasta or place a defrosted cube on a Jacket Potato. . . There are endless uses for my Garlic Chive Butter. . . . incidentally I use this method to store all manner of soft leaf herbs. Thyme, Coriander or Cilantro, Basil, Rosemary, Sage . . . in fact most of the herbs in my garden get stored in Butter in ice cube trays.
scapes galore
It all sounds ambitious and delicious, Reg! Thank you for sharing so many ideas.
garlic rotting over winter in the soil. Planted in raised bed
with drainage along the sides. This was seed garlic from cat. HELP ! Please. THANK YOU
Rotting garlic
It’s hard to tell what you have without pictures. Often rot comes from drainage issues but it sounds like this wasn’t the cause. Also, rot can happen with excessive watering after leaf development stops. Unfortunately, if you have rot, you want to pull it all or the disease spreads. And you have to avoid this soil next season. This page might help you diagnose what’s going on and what to do about it. http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/factsheets/garlicdiseases.pdf
Mini bulbs
Just harvested some hardneck garlic. Two of the heads had mini bulbs growing off the bulb. None of the other bulbs had them. What are these?
bulblets
Hardneck types of garlic usually produce a flower stalk that will produce small bulblets. These are called “topsetting” garlic varieties. You can still eat these small bulbs!
Garlic drooping
I know you aren't supposed to use store bought garlic to plant but figured since I have an apartment I'd try it since I've no yard. I first tried one in a pot inside in my south window and it had been looking great, but because some of the leaves were so long I stupidly trimmed them and used them for cooking. They grew back out but now the bottom two are getting dry while the top long ones have flopped over but still feel normal otherwise. But I'm concerned about them flopping and don't know what to do or what that means. I planted April 25 in the pot and it was shooting within 7-10 days so has only been growing for about a month and a half so surely can't be ready. Should I put it outside? Try attaching it to something to hold up the leaves? Transplant? It was looking so good 'til about two days ago... And I didn't even think it'd grow initially since it was store garlic and inside. ☹️
floppy garlic
Your first instinct is probably the wisest: You aren’t supposed to plant store bought—better to say, actually, that it often has been treated so as not to grow. You know how sometimes an onion, if left sitting around will send up greens? These are edible. Well, even store-bought garlic does the same thing if you wait long enough, and this is what it sounds like yours did. Transplanting will do nothing but weaken it; it would have to start (whatever it’s doing) all over again. Put it outdoors, if you like. But consider it purely as an experiment. In the fall, get a locally grown fresh garlic head at a farmer’s market and plant its cloves in a pot or in the soil. Just give it some winter and it should be ready to harvest in summer. For details, see above.
Planting in containers in May, when to harvest?
I live in northern California, hardiness zone 9B, and I'm trying my hand at growing garlic for the first time. I have an apartment with no yard so planted my garlic in a container with drainage holes using potting soil May 4th and have it on my balcony. I read when you plant in fall it takes 8-10 months but saw your page said 90-150 days between sprouting and harvest. I had sprouts by mid May, so about when should I expect to harvest, assuming they actually created bulbs and not just scapes? Thanks!
potted garlic
Scapes are a good sign. Cut them off to use in cooking (or just discard; the point is, if you leave the scape on, it will use the energy that would have gone into the head). Wait until the greens/foliage dies back then uproot it to see if the clove you planted produced a head.
Blooming garlic
I planted garlic among my roses to help repel insects. Now it is blooming with long stalks with a flower at the top. Do I harvest the garlic after these blooms and stalks turn yellow?
harvesting garlic
For edible garlic (not the ornamental type), some gardeners like to trim off the scapes for eating just as they finish curling in their first loop, before the flower bud develops and opens. This way, the plant focuses on bulb growth rather than using that energy for producing flowers and seeds. But other gardeners prefer to let their garlic flower. Since yours are blooming, the scapes are likely too tough now for eating; you can remove the flower scape (not leaves) now, or just leave them be. As to harvesting the bulbs, you can dig them up when the lower 3 to 5 leaves are turning brown–the upper ones will still be green. Don’t wait until all leaves are brown. If you aren’t sure about timing, gently dig up a bulb to check on its size. Hope this helps!
Garlic Growing Advice
I had brought some garlic from Africa. I am living in India and I had put a close in well balanced soil,it gets plenty of sun. It was put in January and now there are big green leafs. I want it to spread so that I can have more garlic. Do I pull it out and put it's cloves again or do I let it stay in and it will spread on its own?
Time to Maturity
Based on information given on this site, You need to let it grow to maturity in July / August, before digging it up. Let it dry a bit, and replant the cloves. See some of the other comments and replies.
Planting garlic
I love in zone 5 and have some garlic from last year that has some green shoots. Can I plant it now?
spring garlic
Although it’s best to plant in fall, sometimes the bulbs do sprout in storage over winter. Plant these in spring as soon as the ground can be worked. The bulbs may not be as large, and they may not develop cloves, but they can still be tasty.
garlic
What fertilizer should I use for garlic? And when is the most beneficial time to fertilize? I live in southeast Ohio. Thank you!
Best garlic fertilizer
type ????
fertilizing garlic
Good question. Garlic is a heavy feeder and needs lots of nutrients to grow well.
The best time to plant garlic is from September through November. Plant the garlic in full sun in well-drained soil. For planting garlic, we usually lime the soil and then work a couple tablespoons of 5-10-10 complete fertilizer, bone meal or fish meal into the soil several inches below where the base of the garlic will rest. Also, note that a sandy, clay loam is best. In heavier soil, it’s best to plant garlic in raised beds that are two to three feet wide and at least 10 to 12 inches tall.
Fertilize garlic in the early spring by side dressing or broadcasting with blood meal, pelleted chicken manure or a synthetic source of nitrogen. Just before the bulbs begin to swell in response to lengthening daylight (usually early May), fertilize lightly one more time. Weed garlic well, as it can’t stand much competition. Most years, you won’t need to water unless your soil is very sandy or it’s very dry. If May and June are very dry, irrigate to a depth of two feet every eight to 10 days. As mid-June approaches, taper off the watering.
Garlic Growth
I live in NJ. I planted and covered my garlic in Oct. it is only March and my garlic is already growing. should I cut the sprouts off? or just let them grow? and when would I harvest? thanks
garlic sprouting now...
Do not cut the sprouts/foliage off of your garlic. If you are experiencing wintry weather, throw on a bit of mulch, enough to cover. Harvest is not until July, when the slender foliage dies back. BUT before that happens, you will see a long, round stem grow out of the foliage and on the end of it, after the stem forms a curl, a “scape.” The pointed scape is the plant’s flower bud, and it will take energy from the bulb under the ground if left on, so cut it off, along with several inches to a foot of the stem (cut the stem off where it curls). You can use the scape in cooking, as you would, garlic cloves.
thank you
thank you
My garlic patch
Help. My garlic is taking over the whole yard. I dig it out, and it keeps returning and spreading. Is there a remedy to control it like sea salt or something? Love it but it's turned into a monster.
garlic troubles
Goodness! If your garlic is behaving like the wild garlic weed, then the advice for controlling is likely … just what you have been doing. Hand pulling (preferably after a rain, so the soil is soft, and you can better pull up all of the plant without leaving the bulbs) and digging with a trowel or shovel, especially in fall/winter/early spring before new bulbs form in spring. Fortunately, they are shallow-rooted, but you must make sure to dig up all the bulbs. Do not let the plants form scapes. If the plants are in the lawn, keep up with mowing, which may eventually weaken the plants and will prevent scapes from developing.
Planting garlic in spring in N.Y.
The planting calendar said I should have sown garlic cloves in October because I love in N.Y. but it's January now and I was wondering if I have a chance still. I don't want to sow them in January but I'm wondering if I can get them ready for spring. Frost is clear here around may 1st to May 15th. That's when my typical garden plants go in. Garlic is different. Should I start them indoors now in pots near a window. This is my 1st garlic grow so does anybody have experience with this , especially northern Americans with similar weather as N.Y. any advice would be appreciated because garlic is so beneficial. Thank you and good luck gardening this season everyone.
Idk about New York, but my
Idk about New York, but my garlic grew great in a five gallon bucket with my jalepeño plant, as well as one in a smaller container by itself.
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