How to Grow Garlic From Clove #Organic_Gardening

Garlic is grown by planting the cloves. This means that all you have to do is buy some fresh garlic and you can plant some in your garden!

Make sure you buy the garlic for planting in your garden from a local farm, local farmer’s market, or local farmer stand. It needs to be organic garlic that has NOT been sprayed with chemicals.

Step 1: Take your garlic bulb and carefully break it open for the cloves inside. Try not to damage the cloves at the base (where they are attached to the bulb) because a damaged base on a clove will mostly likely not grow. 

Step 2: Take your garlic bulb and carefully break it open for the cloves inside. Try not to damage the cloves at the base (where they are attached to the bulb) because a damaged base on a clove will mostly likely not grow. 

Step 3: Garlic is usually planted in the fall season. It is best planted close to your first frost date. You can wait until the first frost, just don’t wait until the soil has frozen too much for digging and planting. 

Step 4: After planting the cloves of garlic, cover them with 2 inches of dirt and then cover that with some type of mulch (this can be: hay, dry leaves, compost, straw, grass clippings, etc.). This acts like an insulation against freeze/thaw cycles of late fall, winter, and early spring.
Step 5: Fertilize your garlic twice: first fertilize at the time of planting, then fertilize again in the spring to get them ready for a fall harvest. Fish emulsion is a wonderful organic fertilizer choice. 

Step 6: Garlic hates wet soil, so only water them if it has been over a week since the last rain. Newly planted garlic, however, does need moisture to allow further root development, so give them light watering in the first few weeks (unless you are getting enough rain). 

Step 7: In spring, green leaves will start coming up from the ground, and in those green leaves will appear 

Step 8: Once the green stems start to dry up in late summer or early fall, it is time to get ready to harvest your garlic bulbs! 

Step 9: When you are harvesting your garlic bulbs, you need to do this carefully. With hardneck garlic, the stalks are more hardy, so you can slowly and carefully pull them up with a digging fork. You want the whole bulb with the leaves attached. With softneck garlic, the stalks might tear off, so you need to be even more careful. Try your best not to bruise the garlic bulbs. Besides lightly dusting off the dirt, do not clean them off with water.