Tag Archives: growing garlic

Grow it yourself: garlic

Freshly harvested garlic is a very different proposition to the stuff that has been hanging about for ten months and has lost most of its potency. We are not, perhaps, served well by the traditional wisdom of planting on the shortest day and harvesting on the longest day. We prefer Kay Baxter’s advice and moved to autumn planting in order to get it in growth before it has to deal with the cold, sodden soils of a wet winter. You can even successionally sow from May to August to extend the harvest season. Fresh picked green garlic is delicious.

Garlic needs to be grown in full sun, in heavily worked, fertile soils. It is a greedy feeder and good drainage is critical. If you are organised, you can prepare the beds now and sow a quick green crop. Dig that green crop in two weeks before planting the garlic. This, allied to late autumn warmth, will give them a real kick start into growth.

Always plant only the biggest and the strongest cloves from the garlic bulb and never but never plant the cheap, imported Chinese stuff (wrong hemisphere so out of season, may be carrying virus which threatens the local strains of garlic and will have been chemically treated). If you follow Kay Baxter’s advice and plant at 10cm diagonal spacings, you can get 100 plants to the square metre. We prefer a wider spacing of up to 15cm in parallel rows. Cover the cloves with a couple of centimetres of soil. Keeping the area free of weeds stops competition but also keeps the soil well cultivated, thus helping with drainage in the wet months. Some gardeners liquid feed regularly. We don’t, but we mulch with compost which is effectively a form of slow release. It is important that the crop never dries out or it will stop growing so be particularly vigilant from November onwards. Garlic can be harvested as soon as the tips start to turn brown.

First published in the Waikato Times and reproduced here with their permission.

Growing garlic

Sown in late autumn, the garlic is well into growth here - seen with an unusually heavy frost which had me out with the camera this morning

Sown in late autumn, the garlic is well into growth here - seen with an unusually heavy frost which had me out with the camera this morning

We have been talking about garlic.This is because of the repeated advice from a local garden centre that it is not too late to plant garlic but you must start it off in trays and transplant in several weeks time when the bulbs have made good growth. It is an approach that will work (though individual pots cause less root disturbance at the time of transplant rather than trays) but it is a lot of work that we are not convinced is necessary.

Garlic can be planted directly into the ground. It is not difficult to get it growing. Within a few days of planting, it should be showing fresh root. But it is getting late in the planting season and should be done immediately. Increasingly, we are of the opinion that it is an unhelpful old wives’ tale that it should be planted on the shortest day and harvested on the longest day. These days, Mark plants it in autumn, a practice which is becoming increasingly common in this country. Autumn planting means the cloves are already growing well before the ground becomes cold and sodden.

The single biggest issue with garlic is that you need to know where they come from because you want NZ garlic. Cheap imported garlic may look fine and clean but it is usually from China, so from the wrong hemisphere and therefore on an opposite seasonal sequence. Added to that, imported garlic is reputed to be troubled by garlic virus which you do not need to unleash.

Other growing tips:

• Break the garlic bulb into single cloves and only plant the big ones. It is a waste of time planting small cloves.

• Plant at about 10cm spacings into ground which has been dug over well and is friable and fluffy.

• Put the cloves in so they are about 2cm deep to the top of the clove. Press them down firmly because they can push themselves out of the ground as they start to grow.

• Pile on the compost on top of the soil. Garlic is a hungry plant. Real enthusiasts will liquid feed regularly and keep the fertiliser up to them and it is likely to result in a bigger and better harvest. We are busy here with a big garden so Mark just plants well, keeps the area weedfree and that is pretty much it until harvest time.

• If we get a very dry spell in spring, that can be a problem. Check the crop. You may have to water them if we get several weeks without rain.

• Harvest around mid summer when the bulbs have reached maturity. You do not have to wait for the tops to die off. Dry the garlic before storing (plaited is the traditional approach) – hanging in an airy situation helps it to last longer.

And, basically, that is about it. Keep the vampires at bay.

In the Garden: June 18, 2010

Pleione bulbs

Pleione bulbs - discard the mushy, dark ones like the specimen to the left

  • The winter solstice or shortest day of the year is nigh – this coming Monday in fact. Alas the worst of the winter weather hits after the shortest day but at least you can console yourself with the thought that the days are lengthening again.
  • Traditionalists will be out planting their garlic (ours is in already). If you don’t have big fat cloves saved from last season, then make sure you only buy New Zealand garlic for planting. The cheap Chinese garlic comes from the wrong hemisphere so is out of its seasonal cycle and is reputedly riddled with virus which threatens our local garlic industry. You also have no idea what it has been treated with so it is all round bad practice to buy cheap imported garlic for planting.
  • Asparagus is a luxury crop for the home gardener because it is a permanent plant which takes up space all year for a harvest lasting only six weeks or so. It also takes a few years to start cropping well so is unsuitable unless you are planning on staying in the same place. But for those with space and the long term commitment, heading out to pick some spears in spring is a gourmet experience. If you have a patch, now is the time to clean it up and spread a blanket of compost to feed the crowns below the ground and to suppress weeds. If you have plans to plant an asparagus patch this spring, then get in now and dig the area. Then double dig it. Add as much compost and manure as you can and dig it yet again. Then let it rest and mature before planting in a couple of months time.
  • Winter is the time for pruning all deciduous plants except for cherries (both ornamental and edible) and plums which are summer pruned to prevent silver blight getting in. Gardeners in cold, frost-prone areas are best to leave their hydrangeas until last (pruning encourages growth which can then get burned by frost). But wisterias, roses, apples, grapevines and the rest can all be tackled over the next six weeks.
  • We did Outdoor Classrooms last year on pruning wisterias and grapevines (these are on http://www.abbiejury.co.nz and on Stuff (Deb, are these still accessible on the Fairfax site?) We will be looking at pruning roses and hydrangeas shortly. Don’t cut your wisteria off at ground level if you want flowers this spring.
  • Most spring bulbs are in growth already so it is time to look at planting or lifting and dividing the summer bulbs – particularly lilies.
  • Pleione orchids are spring flowering but now is the time to clean up clumps and repot because they are still dormant. These are a most attractive and hardy ground orchid, often called the teacup orchid. If you look after them, they build up quite quickly and we find them useful for carpeting woodland margins where conditions are open. The prized yellow ones like a winter chill so will do better inland and in the south but we find the pinks, lilacs and whites are equally at home in milder areas. It pays to clean them up now (discard the soft, mushy black bulbs and keep the fresh green or red ones, trimming off last season’s dead roots) because root disturbance on pleiones once they are in growth is a no-no.