58GARLIC 101
Fall is garlic-planting time. For
most of us, with fall planting on our
mind, thoughts turn toward tulips,
daffodils, fall-flowering mums and
flowering kale. But garlic?
When the fresh crop of tulip
bulbs arrives at your local garden
retailer, in early September, you
may notice that the garlic arrives
too. You might love it or hate it,
but there is no arguing that fall is
the best time of year to put garlic
in the ground.
Growing garlic is oddly counter
intuitive. You might naturally
think of planting garlic when
you plant your vegetables and
herbs in the spring. The ancient
herb is grown from a bulb or, to
be more precise, a clove, which
is broken off a bulb. In short, you
plant the cloves in the fall, harvest
the scapes early in summer, and
harvest the bulbs in August.
Here’s how it works. Use bulbs
that you either acquired from
friends, the grocery store or a
reliable garden supplier, and be
sure of one thing: that they are
locally produced. Retailers of
garlic will tell you that you are
smarter to grow “seed garlic”
than any old garden variety of
grocery garlic. Seed garlic is
virus indexed, meaning it has
been grown for the purpose of
growing into more garlic, not for
eating. It has been selected for its
ability to grow virus-free and is
therefore disease- and insect-free
at the time of planting. The ones
that you buy for eating will grow,
but will they grow as well as the
genuine seed-growing varieties?
You might want to grow both side
by side as an experiment.
We grow the variety ‘Music’.
It’s not the largest or flashiest
variety, but it’s very winter hardyGARDENING: GARLIC