Allium sativum, Amaryllidaceae family
Garlic originated somewhere between the Middle East and Central Asia, thousands of years ago. Now it’s found in cuisine worldwide, although it is not as widespread as onions. In fact, 80% of the world’s garlic is grown in China.
It’s closely related to onions, leeks, chives etc., and has many close relatives in wild or non-cultivated forms. Wild garlic, also called ramsons or wood garlic, is Allium ursinum. When I planted garlic in my Newmarket garden in 1983, my father was horrified because he assumed it was wild garlic!
Wild garlic likes shady and moist conditions, and is often found near riverbanks. It has pretty white flowers, similar to garlic chives (Allium tuberosa). The leaves make fantastic pesto.
Ornamental garlic, also called Tulbhagia and ‘society garlic’, is in the same Amaryllidaceae family. It originated in South Africa and decorates gardens in temperate climates. The purple flowers in early summer are best cut off and composted once flowering finishes, because they can become a prolific weed if you allow them to drop their seeds.
Harvest period
- Days from seed to first harvest, sown/planted in September and harvested in June: 260
- Sown/planted in January, harvested early to mid-July: 180
- Best climate is cool to warm, not too wet, and there must be frost in winter to enable bulbs to differentiate into cloves.
Why grow them
My customers tell me that Homeacres garlic is often more pungent than the garlic of commerce. A little goes a long way, and raw garlic is excellent for the health.
Garlic stores so easily. From just one sowing, and one resulting harvest, you can enjoy it for almost the whole year.
The sulphurous compounds, which give such a potent flavour, are probably a defence mechanism used by the plants to prevent them from being eaten. This is why crushed garlic can be a useful pest deterrent, against slugs for example.
When I show garlic on social media, the posts attract many comments and questions. People are keen to grow it, not least because:
- It’s easy to grow and store.
- You don’t need much to bring fantastic flavour and health into your life.
- You can grow a worthwhile amount in containers.
- Your harvest is your seed for planting a few months later!
Pattern of growth
There are small variations according to the two main types.
The two types of garlic
Hardnecks make slightly smaller bulbs than softnecks, with larger and fewer cloves in each one. The cloves are easier to peel than those of softnecks.
Harvest is two to three weeks later than that of softnecks, and they can store until early spring.
Hardneck garlic grows a flower stem by mid-spring, and if you leave it to grow it will flower beautifully by early summer. The stem is also called a scape, and is delicious when harvested as a tender stem, before the flower bud on top has swollen much.
- To eat scapes, just snap off the main length of stems in mid-spring when still tender. They are tasty roasted or sautéed. The plants then continue to grow without any flower stem, resulting in slightly larger bulbs.
Softnecks make mostly larger bulbs, and with more differentiation into cloves of variable size.
They mature in early summer mostly and store for up to 11 months, depending on the variety and storage location.
Softnecks never make a flower stem.
A variation
A third type is not garlic! It’s often called ‘elephant garlic’ and is a way to impress your friends. It’s actually a leek in bulb form (Allium ampeloprasum) and tastes excellent when roasted. The cloves are four to five times heavier than even the larger softneck varieties.
- The flavour is mild, not pungent, and the texture is creamy.
- Harvest in mid rather than early summer.
Plant in early autumn, from the large cloves of your harvest. You can also plant small ‘bulbils’, see the photo below, which adds a year to the harvest. Bulbils grow into cloves in year one, thence to bulbs in year two. Elephant garlic makes a flower stem, just like hardneck garlic. You can harvest it in late spring as a scape.
Varieties
- Flavour-wise, I like Solent Wight (softneck) which, along with Mersley Wight, stores really well. It grows smaller bulbs than, say Provence Wight.
- For an early harvest, even in late May, try Early Purple Wight. Eat it before the end of autumn, because it sprouts in storage by early winter.
- A good hardneck for cool climates is Doocot, which originated in Canada and grows especially well in cold conditions (supplier – Really Garlicky Co.).
- From your harvest of bulbs, keep the largest ones for seed. Separate these into cloves to re-plant each autumn.
What to expect
First leaves can appear any time from autumn to late winter, depending on the variety.
- Don’t worry if you don’t see any leaves until even late winter. Your plants will be developing lots of roots before leaves appear. During spring you will be amazed at the speed of growth.
If, by mid-spring you are not impressed by strong, dark green leaves, you could top dress the bed with some more compost, for moisture retention as much as nutrients.
Garlic really goes for it in the spring, and any extra compost applied in April will also help the growth of your succession planting, for example beetroot after the garlic harvest.
The soil
I don’t mention soil a lot in these lessons because I assume you are no dig. It makes garlic and all vegetable so easy to grow – see the comparison photos below from Inverness in North Scotland, latitude 58° North. If you are dig and till, you will need to do extra cultivation and, above all, weeding.
If your soil is heavy and drains slowly, beds slightly raised with compost make a difference. They do not need to be more than 7 cm/3 in high, nor do they need wooden sides, as I show in the photos below.
Suitable for containers/shade?
Both are possible, so you can grow garlic in a pot in the shade. Or in the sun!
- Use a medium-sized container, say 30 cm/12 in wide – this will be able to grow six plants.
- Garlic makes efficient use of precious container space, because part of its growth is during winter.
- After, or even before the harvest, you can transplant, say, beetroot, kale and salad
Clear
Your ground is clear once you have harvested garlic and pulled any weeds. If you used a trowel to lift bulbs, making the surface lumpy and uneven, best walk on the bed to firm the soil down, then rake lightly to level.
Follow with
Good plantings to follow garlic include almost any brassicas. Also beetroot, carrots, dwarf French beans, chard and radicchio, to name just a few possibilities. I often sow carrots or transplant beetroot between rows of garlic.
- There is no need to apply any feeds or compost before making these new plantings.
- You may also have been able to set them between garlic, as much as four weeks before its harvest.