Grow Your Own Garlic!
 
Growing garlic like this is very satisfying and not that difficult if you’re a gardener.  Garlic will grow in any soil, but to grow Big German White garlic like this, you’ll need to do a little work.
 
Garlic is a heavy feeder (it likes lots of Nitrogen in the early spring).  We add a lot of compost to our soil and a slow release form of Nitrogen before we plant in late October.  We use pelletized chicken manure which holds the Nitrogen until the spring & doesn’t leach out of the soil before that.  Once you’re soil amendments are done, you are ready to plant!
 
Best time to plant is mid to late October.                         
“Pop” the cloves (break all the cloves from the bulb), It’s ok if the skin comes off.
Do this a day or two before you plant. Plant about 2” deep with the root side down, pointed side up! You can plant your garlic as close as 6” x 6”, but we give ours a bit more room.
 
Your garlic will begin growing roots and may even send up a shoot – 
this is good. About 3-4 weeks after planting, you will want to cover the garlic with 3-4” of straw.  This helps mitigate the soil movement from freezing & thawing in the fall & spring so the roots that developed don’t break.  Winter comes, snow falls, and you’re going to have Great Garlic! 
 
Early spring (mid March) you will begin to see you’re garlic coming through the straw.  If you did not have a slow release form of Nitrogen to put down before you planted, then now is the time to put a quick release form of Nitrogen down – mid March to early April.  Now see that your garlic stays weed free and water about an inch per week.  
 
Hardneck varieties produces a “Scape”, usually around the middle of June. This is the stalk that comes from the center of the plant.  Snap these off, otherwise they will take energy away from bulb formation.  Continue to keep your garlic well watered and weeded for the next 3 or 4 weeks. 
 
Evaluating when to harvest your garlic; Think of each leaf as a wrapper around the bulb.  Harvested with too many wrappers & it will not dry well.  Harvested with too few & it will not store well.  When only 5 to 6 leaves are still green, the lower ones will have dried up, it’s time to harvest.  Using a garden fork to loosen the soil a few inches away being careful not to injure the bulbs and lift the garlic from the soil.  It’s ok if there is soil on the bulb just shake as much as you can off and place your garlic in a well ventilated place where the temperature will not exceed 110 degrees. In 3 – 4 weeks you will have a nice crop of cured  garlic.   If you enjoyed growing your own garlic then save the largest bulbs with the largest cloves to plant again in the fall.     
 
                                              Happy Garlic Growing- 
 

•                         Using the undercutter for harvesting the garlic                                                     Now we can easily lift the garlic