Have you ever noticed the cost of organic garlic? Australian organic garlic retails for around $30 or more a kilo ( €20/US$22). Other non organic garlic is a little less, while in the latter half of the year, the only garlic available commercially comes via Mexico and Argentina, which looks better than the snow-white mesh bags of Chinese bleached ‘garlic’. I would rather go garlic free than eat these nasty lumps of poison. If you love garlic, choose the best. Source seasonal garlic from a farmers’ market. Flavour and economy are two of the main reasons why I grow my own, but I have to admit, I love harvesting garlic and watching the early colours change from deep crimson and purple to pale white striped mauve after they dry. Beautiful bunches of garlic always remind me of French country markets, alchemy, rustic food and good health. Long live garlic.
Growing garlic is time-consuming, which might explain why one head of organic garlic costs around $1.50. I’ll outline the steps here, in laywoman’s terms, for those who may be interested in growing a few. For those without a small patch of earth to dig around in, just enjoy this season’s garlic pics.
When to Plant
I usually start planting out cloves during Autumn, from late April to the end of May and do this in stages, thus staggering the final harvest dates. The old adage which advises that garlic must be planted by the shortest day, winter solstice, works as a rough guide, but I am finding that most of these old guides no longer work for me. If you leave your garlic till June 21st, expect a poor crop or none at all. The temperature of the earth is perfect for garlic in the last month of Autumn, providing just enough warmth to get green shoots going before winter. Given that garlic takes around 6-7 months to mature, it makes more sense to harvest them in late November, rather than during the busy December month. Last year I lost one bed of garlic planted in mid June and I can only put this down to the drop in ground temperature and soggy soil. The little cloves rotted and vanished. Of course the timing of planting will vary from region to region. I live in a cool temperate zone. Tap into local knowledge to find the best time to plant in your own area.
Planting Out
Choose your best looking cloves when planting. Keep some fine specimens from your previous harvest and plant these. If you choose little cloves, you will most likely produce little bulbs. The asexual reproduction of garlic means that what you plant is what you harvest, so choose your cloves wisely. It is said that garlic reproduced in this way will eventually lose its vigour, and that one should revert to seed at some point, a process that takes years. I am yet to notice any loss of vigour in the plants at our current farm. Your soil needs to be fertile and friable. Hard clay isn’t suitable as the little bulbs need to expand easily. Push the flatter end of the cloves into the soil: the top or pointy end should be just below the surface. Plant cloves about 10 cm apart, in rows about 40 cm apart. It’s a good idea to mulch lightly over the soil once the green shoots appear. Organic sugar cane mulch works well. Given that your garlic will be in the ground for at least 6 months, you don’t want them having to compete with weeds for moisture and nutrition. If Winter and early Spring is dry, you’ll need to water the crop. Most of my crop was smaller than average this year. This was due to very low rainfall from late Winter to Spring when we were away and unable to water. Smaller bulbs still taste good but are tedious to peel. These little underground gems need watering just like any other plant. Towards harvest time, hold off watering.
Harvesting
Harvesting occurs when the stalks begin to dry out and seed pods form at the top. I usually dig out a few in early November and start eating the immature specimens, the stalk included. By digging them up occasionally, you’ll be able to gauge their development. If you leave them too long, the cloves begin to separate and open like a flower: while still tasty, these don’t store as well as tightly closed garlic bulbs.
After pulling the garlic, clean the bulbs as soon as possible. I use a damp cloth to remove dirt and baked on mud. It’s important to clean them before bunching and hanging as later cleaning is far more tedious and you don’t want to introduce any dampness to a perfectly dried garlic. Hang the garlic under an airy verandah, well protected from rain and harsh northern sun. They may take a few weeks to thoroughly dry and harden. Well cured garlic will store longer.
Storing
After drying, the fun begins. Rub away the outer skins and along the stem to reveal the clove shapes. Most of the dark purple papery skin disappears, revealing soft mauve and white underneath. You might like to plait a few if you have grown soft necked garlic. Most of my garlic stems are too hard to bend into plaits so I make a few nice bunches to display in the kitchen. The rest get cut and stored in a dark spot, usually in a close weaved covered basket, or a container that can breathe, or in a hessian sack inside a terracotta pot.
I’ve featured photos of bulbils in my header photo and throughout the post. Bulbils form when a scape is allowed to mature. The scape is the stalk growing out of a garlic bulb. Although it is sometimes called a ‘garlic flower’ it is not really a flower. Like cloves from a bulb, bulbils propagate garlic vegetatively and the bulbs that grow from them are clones of the parent plant. This year we found a mysterious bed full of excellent garlic that I definitely did not plant. I vaguely recall throwing around a few handfuls of bulbils around two years ago. During summer, they produced stems that looked more like chives. They grew under the shade of a rampant pumpkin vine. These chive like bunches developed, untouched, over two years, and turned into my star garlic for the year.
A few notes.
The medicinal properties of garlic are well-known. A short paper on the history of garlic used medicinally can be found in the link below.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3249897/
But then the Italian contadini always knew this, as these old proverbs corroborate:
- L’aglio è la farmacia dei contadini. Garlic is the peasant farmer’s pharmacy.
- L’aglio è la spezieria dei contadini. The same as above. A ‘spezieria’ was a workshop – laboratory in ancient times where medicines were prepared by an apothecary. The monasteries were famous for their spezierie.
Bulbils broken into little gem like cloves.
ALMOST ITALIAN 
Garlic bulbs are so pretty. Growing it is definitely wonderful especially with the pri e 💗
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They are lovely things, I like to photograph them as much as eat them.
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I love garlic, but often have to go garlic-less when entertaining. So many people we know here in Greece have problems with garlic – wether imagined or real health issues. But, if you do love garlic, I agree – use only the best, preferably homegrown. Yours certainly look wonderful. I wonder if those bulbils can be used in cooking?
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It is hard to imagine that people have issues with the world’s healthiest food, I can’t go without garlic for a single day. iI’s probably the sulfides ( also in onions and other alliums). I like the mention of ‘imagined’ issues- I can no longer eat out with my sister in law because of her imagined allergies to everything, you name it. It must make the catering hard work.
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Sadly I am one of those who find garlic a problem. It and other alliums have a water soluable fructan that aggravates my gut. Fortunately infused oil for flavour is a good alternative
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Ah yes, I knew that Sandra. Lucky that the infused oil is OK.
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Love this post Francesca, your love of garlic cultivation is writ on every word and image
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Thanks Sandra, I think they are beautiful. But then there’s the leek now in flower, looking like a Persian architectural fantasy interpreted by Dr Seuss. After struggling with blogging all year due to other family obligations, my mother’s health and her move to ‘a place’, Bali, asthma and a cough for 4 months, I’m trying to get back into writing. I have so many half done posts that need airing so I might keep up the daily flow for a bit. The more you write, the easier it gets.
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2018 has chucked out a lot of challenges on many levels. I hope writing about the beauty in your life will help set things back on an even keel. I for one will look forward to reading about that wondrous leek flower
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‘ . . . so many half-done posts’ . . . . I know but few people who have a real problem with garlic and I would be lost without half-a-dozen cloves a day, and, oh am I put off by all these imaginary illnesses also 🙂 ! Yet many more at the moment are struggling with posts to come . . . . I’ll try grow my own healthy Australian garlic next year and so hope I may tell you of my successes on one of those posts which just took awhile to come to view . . .
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Your garlic looks gorgeous Francesca!
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A wonderful garlic gardening tutorial. Garlic is difficult for us to grow up here, but now that we seem to be getting warmer every summer I should try some next spring. Our organic mostly comes from Spain. We also have those Chinese bags of white shaved yuk. Having traveled to China many times during my working days, I don’t do any foodstuffs produced in China except for Sichuan pepper.
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Is the organic garlic expensive there also? Hard to imagine how cold it would be there and what conditions would be like if grown through Spring and summer. You might get some tasty young garlic, which I do enjoy too. ah yes, Sichuan pepper, and its pungent cousin, Sichuan pepper oil.
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Organic is about 25% higher in price from generic non-organic. We do get local Ramslöks (wild garlic) in late May. Some White German is grown here, but not so much commercially. Sweden only began using garlic in recipes about 50 years ago. If you go back to recipes from then and older, garlic is rarely seen as an ingredient. As an example, my 85 yo mother-in-law doesn’t cook with garlic and never has. However, over recent years garlic has become a pantry staple here.
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That’s interesting Ron, Garlic only became a regular ingredient here in Australia from the late 1960s- a very similar time frame.M parents didn’t cook with it, but I remember my grandparents on my fathers’s side grew Russian garlic- a big cloved and very mild garlic, in their back yard. They were fishermen and lived on a diet of fresh fish and things from the yard- so maybe that milder garlic was used by those anglo-celts in an earlier time.
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You will think I am a very unusual Italian signora when I tell you I don’t cook with garlic at all. My dad (like Nonno and zio) just can’t bear it, so Mamma Rosa never ever cooked with it, and as a consequence, neither do I!
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But Signorina, no, what about your children, il marito.
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They have it when we are out!
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Hello Francesca:
I just found your blog through the comments in Ron’s latest post on Lost in a Pot and couldn’t resist checking out another almost-x blog :). Your garlic is gorgeous. When I used to have a yard I grew a lot of garlic and other alium and I always loved the bulbils.
I’ve subscribed to your beautiful blog and look forward to future posts!
– Chava of Almost Kosher
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Thanks for joining Chava.
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Yes, I have noticed how horrendously expensive Aussie garlic is. As I no longer buy imports, our garlic consumption has plummeted and I only use it when I think it is entirely necessary to a dish. (I did rub a clove on slices of toasted sourdough last night, for a bruschetta). I know Sherry buys a box from Patrice Newell every year but this year, production is down, because of the drought. I thoroughly enjoyed you taking us through the steps and had never heard of ‘bulbils’.
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Your photos and tutorial make it tempting to try to grow garlic, though I think our climate is much harsher here in the north. I really enjoyed reading your descriptions, though. We too have to avoid any of those adulterated and over-sprayed products from China!
best… mae at maefood.blogspot.com
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Thanks Mae, yes climate is always the issue with many crops though it was successfully grown in Northern Europe and so you never know- worth a try.
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I appear to have serious garlic envy my friend! Loved this post. Yes no Chinese garlic for me … Our garlic is around 30 per kilo and it’s not listed as organic. But it should be coming down in price soon. I didn’t grow it this year thanks to rust .. Next year for me! Woohoo
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ah yes, I remember your rust problems with garlic- how annoying. Is that because you live in such a wonderful lush area with decent rainfall? All your other crops make up for it.
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A friend’s brother grows garlic and some years they get nothing and other years it is fine. I can’t imagine eating or cooking without it!
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They sound unlucky. I always get lots, though varying in size.
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Thank you, I think I will add some garlic to one of my new beds. This was a very helpful instructional post. Luckily it is exactly the right time of year to plant.
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Such beautiful garlic and photographs. Garlic was one of our production crops at Tafe this year, mostly Elephant but a few proper garlic crops. Interesting to grow on that scale. You post is a really good how-to resource. Much excitement when the scapes popped up, I do love them so, grilled some and made a few batches of garlic scape pesto for the freezer. I never buy imported garlic, buy local or grow my own. I must plant some come March.
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I love the bulbils, I’ve never seen those before! I didn’t grow garlic this year but luckily got a few bulbs from a friend who did. I’ll probably buy some online from Ananda too as their rose garlic lasts forever. You’ve inspired me to plant some in Autumn though 🙂
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