Choosing the Right Garlic Seed Size
Learning how to grow garlic starts with selecting the best organic seeds, and size plays a crucial role in this process. At Basaltic Garlic Farm, we’ve observed that larger seeds often lead to larger bulbs, guiding our approach to produce and provide giant seeds for our customers. We categorize our garlic sizes as follows:
It’s been said size matters when selecting garlic seeds for planting. The bigger, the better.
We found this to be true. You will get different bulb sizes if you plant every seed in a bulb. Basaltic Garlic Farm tries its best to produce giant seeds so we can pass them on to you. We think it is a good idea to standardize bulb size. We sort our garlic size by inches,
- Jumbo >3 inches
- Large 2 to 3 inches
- Medium/Culinary 1.5 to 2 inches
- Small is less than 1.5 inches
- Baby Garlic size is 1 to 1.5 inches
All Garlic has different seed sizes in every bulb. Since we are a small farm, we put about 5 to 7 acres in production per year. Our large bulbs sell fast and go out on a first-come, first-serve basis. So pre-ordering is a must if you want to receive the largest bulbs.
Interestingly enough, smaller-sized seed bulbs still can contain good sized seeds and usually increase in size year after year. Proper care is the key, meaning you can grow most anything with decent soil, adequate water, fertilization, and sunlight. We are blessed with fantastic, well-draining, sandy volcanic loam soil, which is the foundation of plant health.
When To Plant Garlic
Regenerative Organic Farming
In the USA, fall is the best time for planting garlic.
Learning how to grow garlic organically using regenerative practices is not as complicated as you think! Most of the hard work with regenerative farming is done in the months and years prior to planting your garlic. With the focus being to build up your soil by growing covercrops so your garlic can thrive with little to minimal imputs when the time to plant comes. With healthy living soil garlic will grow itself given enough water and weed control.
The accepted planting times for most types of Garlic are about 4 to 6 weeks before the ground freezes. In the Northern States, the recommended time to plant is mid September-October. The southern States can plant well into December.
If you miss that window or you encounter an early freeze; no worries. Garlic is a very hardy plant. Garlic loves freezing ground (so long as the frost level remains above the cloves) and some varites require a cold period called vernalization, which is essential for most hardncck garlic to properly produce larger bulb sizes. If you are planting late, dig the hole 2 to 3 inches below the frost level. if you need to plant deeper than 6 to 8 inches it is better to use mulch as additional protection as planting to deep will make harvesting a nightmare and the plant will expend alot more of its stored energy during emergence and will not have the same vigor it would had it been planted 4 inches deep. If you know your frost level is deeper than you plant your cloves make sure to cover your garlic with mulch. The mulch can be grass clipping, leaves or seed-free straw. Be sure to water right after planting so the soil voids are removed. Mulch has the greatest impact in areas where the ground freezes deep enough to reach your cloves. In these areas it’s very important to use a good layer of mulch to protect your garlic. Ensure the ground stays moist all winter long. Usually rain and snow will do this but if you have a dry winter you may need to water multiple times to ensure your garlic does not dry.
Is Planting Early Worth It?
Understanding how to grow garlic in your local environment is key. There has been much discussion about planting early. Some say it can waste seed energy, sending sprouts up. Others are finding planting early is beneficial to solid root development. However, we found that planting early helps increase bulb size and helps the crop to mature evenly come harvest time. Even though most sprouts die back at the tips in sub-freezing weather, the roots become more vigorous and create better growth in the spring so long as the garlic did not producte more than an inch or two of growth before dieing back. Basaltic Farm’s elevation is 3300 feet we regularly receive 18 inches of snow during the winter months. However it does not last long and we find that our garlic does not die back at all over the winter in our area. Allowing your garlic to grow 4 to 6 inches of green tops will also help to fuel the plant over the winter with addtional months of photosynthisis that would otherwise not start till spring. However it is important to know your weather and climate before deciding to plant early because if your do get cold subfreezing temperatures and your garlic dies back to the ground then you risk have a weakened plant come spring.
Planting, Planning & Preparation
Soil Health Tips
Planning is critical if you’re serious about gardening. Preparing your ground is necessary for the best yields. In the spring, get your soil report, and select the right cover crops to unlock your soil. Buckwheat sprouts at 60 degrees and unlocks phosphorus. Mustard bio-fumigates and helps insect control. Legumes add nitrogen. See our cover crops page for more details. If you need amendments, please select OMRI-approved only. You’re purchasing certified organic seeds, so don’t spoil them with non-approved amendments.
Since Garlic is a heavy feeder, it needs nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and sulfur and a PH of 6.5 is optimum. Get these into the ground before planting for the best results. We also recommend foliar feeding in the spring with Neptune’s Harvest seaweed and fish emulsion. Stop feeding and watering three weeks before the intended harvest. In the last three weeks, a little stress increased bulb size and tightened the protective paper around the bulbs.
Do Cover Crops Help?
After harvest, get an updated soil test and plant appropriate new cover crops. Building healthy soils is a never-ending process. Cover crops, also known as green manure, continue to add back what was taken from the ground and significantly contribute to organic matter critical to soil health. Soil tests help you better understand micro and macronutrient dynamics. It can get complicated, but the right cover crops naturally do all the hard work for you.
Lab Test Your Soil For The Best Garlic
Our goal is to completely understand how to grow garlic organically and pass on the information we learn. We work with soil scientists from laboratories and get regular soil tests. The laboratory said that if the soil is balanced, the plants can uptake the natural minerals usually locked out in abused soils. We did a lot of research on cover crops and found that certain types of plants unlock minerals found in every soil type and can also help break the weed cycle.
Weeds steal nutrients from everything, which affects bulb size. Gardening is work, but the rewards are well worth the effort.
We have used a couple of different labs over the years and it’s important to use a lab that is familiar with root crops and their needs. There are many types of tests offered. Consult with your local soil agronomist or contact the lab you planning to use for information on what tests to have done if you are not sure.
Soil Preperation Tips
The diffence between an ok harvest and an amazing harvest is in how you prepare prior to planting. If you get your soil tests and amend the soil with the nutriens that the soil is lacking you will set yourself up for success. Instead of applying synthetic fertilizers, herbacides and pesticides to your soil, let nature do all the work for you. Plant cover crops that will naturally fix nutrients into the soil, cover crops that biofumigate the soil apon termination and that attract predatory insects. With regenerative farming you are not trying to eliminate the pests and some weeds but are providing an ecosystem that encourages equilibrium so pests dont get out of control and weeds dont take over. you will still have to pull weeds but the type and amount of weeds will be more benfical to the ecosysem your creating and there will be fewer of them as well.
Garlic Fertilization Soak
Pros & Cons of Garlic Fertilization Soak
Pros: A proper soak will stimulate early root growth if you have a small amount of garlic to plant. Sterilization can help knock down natural molds found in all soil types.
Well-known seed sterilizers are vodka, isopropyl alcohol, and hydrogen peroxide. OMRI products such as Cinnerate are fast-acting knockdown miticide & fungicide that goes to work immediately to stop disease, immobilize and kill mites and other insects.
A few tablespoons in a five-gallon bucket soaked for one to two hours will ensure your seeds are sterile. If you are going to soak your seeds, you should also have fertilizer soak too. Use suitable quality fish emulsions such as Neptune’s Harvest, a well-known OMRI-approved fertilizer for all growing plants. If you are going to soak your garlic, try using a netted bag; it really helps, making it easy to collect all the garlic at once.
Cons: If you are trying to keep your organic seed pure, finding ORMI-approved products can be difficult. It is a lot of work to keep track of what to do. If Planting a large area, soaked garlic will clog up your planting equipment. If the weather becomes a problem, such as unexpected rain, and you can not plant, you may end up with root growth in as little as 24 to 48 hours on soaked seeds. Handling cloves with root growth is problematic as it is very fragile and susceptible to damage both from mechanical and hand planting. It is also not economical to soak seed for planting an acre or more in most cases.
Mistakes to Avoid When Planting Garlic
On the subject of straw vs. hay, hay has seeds and straw has less seeds—this lesson we had to learn the hard way.
For our purposes, seeded hay is undoubtedly undesired in our field since it introduces a plethora of seeds from plants we don’t necessarily want growing in abundance.
It also overtook the garlic crop, started choking out the sunlight, and formed a dense mat of weeds stealing the nutrients we added. It was extremely time-consuming to spread the hay. So we spent weeks on our hands and knees pulling the weeds. So never use hay on any crop you plant for mulching.
Straw still contains seeds just not as many as it comes from grain crops and is whats left over after harvesting crops like wheat or rice. whats best is to try and find straw or hay that is 1 year old and has been exposed to rain so all of the seeds have had a chance to germinate. it may be a bit groser but at least you wont end up with a lawn growing where your garlic should be.
More on the subject of straw vs. hay
We first spread seeded hay that we received from a neighbor for free, thinking, “Hey, it’s free hay. What could go wrong?” So we decided to stop until we could get unseeded straw about a week into spreading because there was way too much seed in the hay to justify using. A couple of us had a feeling that in a few months, we’d be pulling up a lot of grass from those areas. Well, we were right.
We mostly spent the month of March pulling up grass that had seeded from the hay and spreading new straw over the whole crop. Luckily, we have neighbors who cut, store, and sell straw and fodder for about half the valley; they hooked us up with a great deal on tons of rice straw! With 64 bales in one ton, we should be able to get more than enough to cover the garlic plants!
Straw Spreading Antics
We got a break from pulling grass up from the field as a snowstorm hit and allowed for some playing time. We stayed warm by the fireplace! Mid-march, the decent-sized winter storm filled our little valley with about 1 1/2 feet of snow. This put our straw-spreading antics on hold until the field dried out later in the month. Last winter, we learned that driving on a wet field will likely get your equipment stuck!
Second Season of mulching ideas
This season we bought a straw blower which we thought would save us time applying the mulching cover. Well, it did the job and cut the unseeded straw into small pieces. It took four people to operate and one person to feed the straw into the blower. Poor guy was running back and forth with 120 bales and setting the bales up onto the tractor. So the next guy had to split open the bale and feed it into the hopper. If you provide the straw too fast, it comes out in clumps. Creating uneven application hence requires someone to go out and redistribute the straw. One person on the 40-foot hose to apply the straw. One person on the tractor used forks to move the beast from place to place. Alfalfa is crushed easily and comes out like powder making it easy to apply.
Fall Garlic Planting
The proper time to plant
Fall is the correct time to plant garlic if your goal is to have large bulbs. Planting in the fall allows garlic to spend all winter sending down roots and getting established. Garlic roots are very coarse and not well suited to competing with other weeds and plants for water and nutrients By planting in the fall the garlic has already got a jump start on the growing season and can focus on just sending up leaves and not needing to compete as much with the other plants that are starting to germinate. Garlic takes about 9 months to mature so it truely is essential that it is planted in the fall to allow adaquate time for it to fully develope by harvest time.
Soil Preperation Tips
Keeping weed pressure to a minimum is important, as the weeds will eat up the soil amendments you added. So removing them as quickly as possible is a good idea. Little weeds are much easier to remove than big ones.
Garlic loves moist well, draining soil, and should receive one inch of water weekly. If you have natural rains, this eliminates the water need. If you receive large amounts of rain, the garlic will not mind. But it will not like standing water for more than a few days, so avoid planting in areas prone to flooding. If you lack enough rain, then you must water. The trick to pungent garlic is deep roots in good soil.
Garlic roots, under ideal conditions, can reach twenty-four inches in depth. The deep roots help the garlic regulate extremes such as summer heat or forgetting to water. So water as required; use a rain gauge to help keep track.
Spring Garlic Planting Tips
Regenerative Organic Farming
Garlic planted in the spring is typically used for whats known as green garlic. this is where you are not growing garlic for the purpose of a bulb but rather for the greens. Garlic grown this way is harvest in the same way you would harvest a spring onion or chives. Left to grow it may produce a small bulb or round which is an undivided bulb that is essentially just one giant clove.
Soil Preperation Tips
Keeping weed pressure to a minimum is important, as the weeds will eat up the soil amendments you added. So removing them as quickly as possible is a good idea. Little weeds are much easier to remove than big ones.
Garlic loves moist well, draining soil, and should receive one inch of water weekly. If you have natural rains, this eliminates the water need. If you receive large amounts of rain, the garlic will not mind. But it will not like standing water for more than a few days, so avoid planting in areas prone to flooding. If you lack enough rain, then you must water. The trick to pungent garlic is deep roots in good soil.
Garlic roots, under ideal conditions, can reach twenty-four inches in depth. The deep roots help the garlic regulate extremes such as summer heat or forgetting to water. So water as required; use a rain gauge to help keep track.
Planting Garlic in Frozen Ground
It can be challenging depending on the depth of the frozen soil; if the ground is frozen more than 6 inches it might be best to wait until next year, as it will be a lot of work for you.
If you do decide to still plant use a tractor if you are planting in the ground or use muscle power if you are planting in raised beds to break up the frozen ground at least 6 inches deep and then plant your garlic and cover with a thick layer of mulch. You may need to remove the mulch in the spring if the garlic is not able to poke through on its own.
Harvesting Garlic Best Practices
In the United States, the usual time for garlic harvesting is late June to mid-July. Garlic is a nine-month crop so it is important to begin checking on the bulb developement at about month 8 to 9. Signs to look for are about half to 2/3 of the leaves turning yellow. For softnecks garlic will also begin to lean and fall over indication its time to harvest or very close. Hardneck garlic will send up scapes and we reccomend leaving a few uncut as an indicator. When the scapes stand tall and the umbel begins to swell it is nearly ready for harvest.
A more advance method is to pull a few bulbs and bisect them horizonally and check for spaces between the cloves when there is little to no space between cloves it is ready to harvest. This can be tricky though and if you are not experienced it is easy to let them go to long. a much safer method is to look for clove definition through the papers. if you can see the out line of the cloves clearly plus the other indicators mentioned in the paragraph above its done and ready to come out of the ground.
You will want to stop watering a few weeks prior to harvest to allow the bulbs papers to dry up but if you stop watering to soon your garlic will dry up before it can reach full maturatity. its best to stop watering when you have 7 green leaves left and the scape on your hardnecks are sticking straight up. We typically harvest at 5 green leaves left at Basaltic farms. You will have aproximately 1 leaf yellow per week but if you only have 1 week post watering that your garlic is ready its best to harvest it and not focus on any arbitray number of weeks between stopping watering and harvest.
What to look for: Yellowing leaves appear halfway up the plant. The bottom leaves are brown and drying up even though you are still watering. Many people count the leaves; the garlic is ready to harvest when the top has five green leaves and the rest yellow. We like to dig around the top of the bulb and inspect its size.
To Get The Best Results: You should end up with at least 5 papers around the bulb when you harvest. If you are harvesting by hand, use the least amount of force to get the bulb out. If you pull it too hard, you can lose several layers of paper or rip the neck off of the bulb. This results in shorter storage times. Do not be overly concerned if the garlic has dirt on it.
Any large clods clinging to the roots should be removed. The more papers, the better for more extended storage. It’s better to have more paper and some dirt on the bulb than remove the papers to make it look pretty.
If the garlic starts to split open at the top; you have waited too long. Not all garlic will mature at the exact same time so dont worry to much but do not delay any longer and get that garlic out of the ground. The seeds/cloves are still usable.
If you have been watering or received rain or forgot to stop, mold can quickly become an unwanted issue if your garlic starts to split open or if your garlic has died back back entirely. Timing is everything when it comes to harvesting healthy long storing garlic bulbs.
Signs that garlic is ready to harvest:
- Five or six green leaves remain on the top of the garlic plant.
- Fifty percent of the plant has yellowed and died back.
- Hardneck flower or scapes lose their curl and point straight up.
- Harvest garlic about 3-5 weeks after removing the scapes.
In areas with very dry summers farmers often opt to cure their garlic in the ground. once watering is stopped the plant is allowed to completely die back and stay in the dirt for 6 to 8 weeks to fully cure and dry before it is harvested with specialized equipement. if you have dry summers and not alot of space to cure your garlic in a barn this is a very good method if your soil does not get to hard when dry.