How to Grow Garlic at home | Planting garlic in pots or in the garden【Easy guide】

The garlic plant is easy to grow and is not too demanding in terms of climate, watering or care. Today we will see how to plant garlic at home and get a good harvest. This will not be a difficult task, even for those less knowledgeable about growing vegetables, as garlic is one of the easiest beginner crops to grow, perfect for those just starting out with urban gardening.

As we will see in today’s post, we do not need many things to plant garlic in pots or in the garden, in fact we do not even need seeds, since we will use the garlic cloves that we have in the kitchen.

How to plant garlic step by step

To plant garlic we will not need seeds, but they are sown by directly burying the garlic cloves in the soil or substrate.

Steps to plant garlic:

1. Take the bulb or head of garlic and separate the cloves by removing the superficial and thicker layers of skin. To plant garlic you should not use the small cloves in the center of the bulb (leave those for cooking), when planting garlic use the larger cloves on the outside.
2. You will need a good substrate (not waterlogged or caked) and rich in organic matter, so if we are not very sure about the quality of the soil in our garden, it is best to add compost or earthworm vermicompost to fertilize the soil a little. (To grow garlic in pots it is also recommended to add it to the universal substrate).
3. Separate the different cloves of garlic just at the time you are going to sow, when you have everything ready, and bury them with the pointed part upwards to a depth of about 3-6 cm. The depth to plant garlic depends on its size. You have to bury it in such a way that the earth above the clove is approximately twice its size thick, and we also have to make sure that a head of garlic as big as the one we use to remove the cloves can fit in that space. with whom we are planting garlic. You can make a groove of about 6-7 cm where you will deposit the row of garlic cloves that are then covered with soil or you can also make small holes or holes where the cloves are inserted before filling them.
4. Leave a distance between teeth of about 15 cm, whether you are going to plant garlic in garden terraces or if you are going to plant them in large pots or planters. In this photo you can see a bed of garlic already grown with a padding or mulching of straw to protect the soil.

Plant garlic at home: grow garlic in pots

If you are only going to use one pot for each garlic plant, it does not need to be very large, a container of about 15-20 cm in diameter and a depth of about 25 cm will be enough to plant the garlic at home.

Do not forget to make some holes in the bottom and place some stones or gravel as drainage to prevent the substrate from waterlogging and the garlic from rotting, since this is a crop that needs little water.

What is the best time to plant garlic?

If you have wondered when to plant garlic in pots and you are worried because you do not know if now is the best time to plant garlic, you are in luck, the garlic plant can be grown throughout the year.

Garlic is grown in spring and summer along with typical garden vegetables such as tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce, chard… But it is also one of the typical autumn and winter crops, so you can have it together with other plants that are more resistant to cold, such as legumes, leeks, cabbages, onions…

Of course, you have to know that although garlic is a crop that supports low temperatures, it needs a lot of sun for its development, so keep this in mind when choosing the place to place it.

Being a crop with a long cycle, that is, it takes many months to be ready for harvest (4 to 8 months, depending on the variety and the weather and soil conditions), it is usually planted in autumn (from October in early December in the Northern Hemisphere). In this way, the harvest will take place in spring-summer together with the rest of the vegetables in the garden.

You can also plant late in spring and harvest garlic heads in autumn or winter, as in this community garden we visited in Beijing, where they were waiting for the snow to clear to harvest the garlic.

Garlic care and watering

After knowing how to plant garlic at home, it is important that we know the steps to take to care for the garlic plant throughout the growing cycle. In this way, a few months after planting them, we will get a good harvest and a large head of garlic will have grown for each clove that we plant at the beginning of the cycle.

Necessary irrigation for garlic

Garlic is undemanding in watering. If you are growing garlic in the garden, the first months it will not be necessary to water too much, especially if the natural rainfall is enough to keep the soil with some moisture. During spring and summer, it will suffice to water the garlic during dry periods (since this is the time of bulb formation and it is important that the substrate is moist), stopping watering a few weeks before harvest, as we will see below. continuation.

The irrigation of garlic in pots will be light and frequent at the beginning (small irrigations every two days) and a little more spaced as the crop develops. Between 30 and 90 days, the garlic should be watered every 4 or 5 days, and from the fourth month of cultivation, we will water once a week.

When the floral scape appears and the leaves begin to dry, stop watering the garlic to prevent the bulbs from rotting and to collect them as dry as possible. At this time, it is important to cut the flower stem, strip the leaves or «tie the garlic», which favors the end of the fattening of the heads of garlic inside the soil.

In this link to the article entitled Garlic: How to grow it in the garden you can find other tips on this easy crop, for example the beneficial associations or crops compatible with garlic and also more details on the care and work to grow garlic at home, such as the weeding and tying.

I also leave you in this complete video with several tricks about growing garlic:

Uses and Benefits of Garlic

If we plant garlic in the garden, the only use of this food will not be its use in the kitchen. As we will see below, garlic also has important benefits for the health of the garden and for ours.

Homemade insecticides with garlic for the organic garden

Garlic is one of the most useful plants in the garden, since it can be used to prepare remedies that will help us fight against pests and diseases, natural insecticides and fungicides. Also, with its smell, it will help us drive away typical garden pests such as carrot flies or aphids, so you can place it next to plants that may be affected by these bugs.

Medicinal properties of garlic

Furthermore, garlic is a well- known medicinal plant. Among its properties, its effectiveness against digestive conditions stands out, such as the stomach, it also helps to secrete gastric juices, favors the elimination of gases, improves circulation and is a powerful antimicrobial, among other things.

Black garlic, a way of preparing garlic thanks to the fermentation of the cloves, is a powerful bactericide that is very famous for its beneficial properties for health.

You can also participate in the post. If you have the garlic plant in pots or in the garden and you want to share photos, experiences or questions about how to grow garlic, do not hesitate to leave your contributions in the comment thread below.

References

1. Rosero, J. & Lopez Jurado, G., 1974. Effect of defoliation on the thickening of garlic bulbs. Journal of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 6.
2. Yugsi, L., 2011. Field Guide: Clean Production of Vegetables. Informative Bulletin No. 408. National Institute of Agricultural Research. Quito, Ecuador
3. Maroto Borrego, JV & Baixauli Soria, C., 2017. Outdoor horticultural crops. Cajamar Publications Caja Rural. Agricultural Series, No. 13.
4. Toledano Medina, M., 2017. Optimization of the elaboration process and physiological and physical-chemical characterization of black garlic. Doctoral Thesis, University of Córdoba.