How to Plant Garlic

We are going to show you how to plant garlic! It’s that time of year (Fall/November) in 8a to plant garlic before the frosts come. 

Last year, I purchased 3 heads of organic garlic from the grocery store to plant. But then I realized it was a little too early to plant them. So at the beginning of November, I purchased 3 more organic heads of garlic. The first set had dried out a little and even started to sprout. I had nothing to lose, so I planted all 6 heads to see what happened. Turns out, they all grew!

You will want to purchase organic garlic because the regular ones are sometimes sprayed with chemicals to prevent them from sprouting. 

Store bought garlic is often soft neck garlic which grows in zones 7 and up because it’s not as cold hardy. If you are in 6 and below, you want to grow hardneck garlic and should purchase that variety of garlic heads or seeds. 

Basically to plant store bought garlic, you separate the garlic head into cloves. Plant each clove into the soil about an inch down with the pointy side up/root side about 3 inches apart. 

Keep them consistently watered. Through the winter, we may have watered them once a week, unless it rained. You can also mulch them if you’d like. We put our wood shavings from the chicken coop on them last year for some warmth and also fertilizer!

We harvested 75+ heads of garlic this past June. After curing them, we minced them in the food processor and froze them in mason jars. We made 16 cups of minced garlic!