Avoid Planting This Popular Vegetable From Seed - There's A Better Way

Every year, before the soil starts to warm up, excited gardeners scour seed catalogues to select the varieties that they want to grow this season. While most vegetables can be grown very successfully from seeds, there are just a few that you should avoid growing from seed, including onions, potatoes, asparagus, and, of course, a garden favorite and highly popular vegetable: garlic (Allium sativum).

If you were to try to grow garlic from seed, you would need extreme patience and perseverance. First, it won't be easy to source actual garlic seeds because, with constant breeding, a lot of garlic varieties won't even produce viable seeds that will grow into new plants because they're essentially sterile. Instead, the plants produce tiny bulbils when the scapes (those tall and impressive flower heads) mature. These are known as "false seeds" and are usually quite small. Once they're planted, they can actually take up to three years to produce a garlic bulb that's worth harvesting. So, if you're not very patient or don't have the available space to dedicate to this, there is a much better way. The tried and tested method of growing garlic quite successfully is to plant the individual cloves. You can purchase these from a nursery or plant retailer, or you can try some bulbs from the local grocery store, as long as the variety is suitable for your region.

Once you've sourced some whole garlic bulbs, you just want to break each one up into individual cloves, as each one of these will produce a new plant and eventually, an entirely new bulb. Ideally, you want to choose a sunny spot in the garden with soil that's high in organic matter and drains well. You can optimize your soil to grow bigger and better garlic by adding a good amount of compost. The cloves should be buried around 2 to 3 inches deep, and spaced around 6 to 8 inches apart. You can grow your plants in the ground, but don't let your small garden stop you from growing garlic because it will do just as well in a large container. The best time to plant your garlic cloves is in the fall, so that the plants can establish themselves before the ground starts to freeze.

As garlic has fairly shallow roots, your plants will need to be kept watered during long periods of dry weather. For this reason, it's also a good idea to cover the ground with a decent layer of straw mulch, which will help to slow down evaporation. Pay particular attention to watering in late spring and early summer, as that's when the bulbs will be forming. However, you want to stop watering around two weeks before the harvest date to prevent the bulbs from rotting. The best time to harvest those succulent garlic bulbs is when the lowest leaves brown off but around ½ the leaves are still green. After carefully digging them up, place the entire plants in a warm, dry spot with good air flow for around three to four weeks so that the bulbs can cure for longer storage.