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Growing Garlic

Garlic (Allium Sativum) is a perennial herb of the Liliaceae (Lilly) family, which has now become one of the essential ingredients in many main course dishes. Not only does it have culinary uses but also many believe in its medical properties. It has proven its usefulness in the garden, giving protection to other plants from marauding insects. This plant with its strong, pungent smell is rich in amino acids, volatile oil, and sulphur compounds; it also contains enzymes and allicin and has anti septic properties. It contains vitamins, A, B1, B2 and C so clearly is a plant well worth growing.

Garlic is fairly easy to grow but the really good garlic is more difficult. If you just want to grow some form of garlic just separate the cloves from a bulb of garlic from the supermarket and plant them into the ground between September and March, it will more than likely grow, but what it wont be is good garlic. If you want to grow healthy, large bulbs and why grow them unless you do, then there is much more to growing garlic than that.

Planting

There are many other varieties than the one we can buy from the supermarkets, others with better flavour and bigger bulbs but they do require different growing conditions so its important to grow the verities that are suitable for your conditions. Size in garlic is determined first by the variety and then by growing conditions; soil conditions and watering are of the utmost importance when growing, excellent, large, healthy garlic.

Soil Preparation

Garlic requires a well-balanced soil that is loose enough for the bulb to grow and expend. What it doesn't like is dry, hard packed clay or thin rocky soils that may restrict its expansion. Prepare the soil a few months before you intend to plant. Plant the cloves during autumn- late September because garlic likes to come up and put a little growth on before the winter sets in. This ensures that it establishes its root system so that it can survive the winter ready to explode with growth in the spring. As the weather warms up in summer the temperatures causes the garlic to bolt, this means that the plant is going to seed. Since garlic does not produce seed, it reproduces by forming as many cloves as its genetics will allow. The bulb gets bigger until the heat of the summer kills off the leaves.

Growing position

Garlic likes to be planted in fertile, well-drained raised beds so that the bulb itself is in the drier part of the soil with its roots down where there is more moisture.

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