It's another garlic video! I am on a mission to get everyone to plant garlic and I will not stop
talking about garlic until they do! Garlic is one of my favorite crops and that's not just because
it's delicious and adds amazing flavor to every dish that you put it on it's also because it can
be grown as an off-season crop, so by that I mean it can be planted after pretty much everything
else in your garden is done and then by the time you harvest the next summer you can follow it
almost directly with your fall crops. Now probably the most common mistake I see folks make with
growing garlic is planting it at the wrong time. The key to nice big bulbs of garlic is to fall
plant. In most areas of the country except for the South you want to plant in the fall. Now if
you run out of time and you have to plant in the spring there are a few tips that you can follow to
get a successful harvest in the spring and I'll cover those toward the end of this video. But
if at all possible, in most areas of the country, you want to plant in the fall. But like me you may
have not fully understood why- like why do I have to do that, why does it make such a difference?
You have to excuse my uh dueling roosters back here in the background. There are several reasons
that planting garlic in the fall is important. The first is that garlic requires a natural dormancy
period so a period essentially of rest and by planting in the fall you're allowing that to
naturally happen. The garlic is going to put on a small amount of growth in the fall after
it's planted. You want your garlic to have time to put on some root growth so that it can get a
jump start on growing in the spring. It will then, as the temperatures get very cold in the winter,
go into its dormancy period and as soon as the temperatures are right in the spring it will
jump into growing right away. Now you may do this and it is still very likely that you will see a
small amount of green top growth on your garlic through the winter. If your climate is anything
like mine here in Ohio we tend to get these weird warm spells in the middle of January where it's
like 60 degrees and I've had garlic growing in December, January, February and then we get hit
by a major freeze. Do not worry- if you mulch your garlic with straw when you plant it that will help
insulate and protect those green shoots. The other thing is is that in most cases even if there is
green growth up and it gets frozen all the way back the garlic bulb under the ground is still
healthy it will just send up more shoots once the weather is optimal again. So don't fret too
much if your garlic is sending up green growth too early. That being said that is the danger of
planting too early in the fall if you get a ton of green top growth that can be detrimental when the
freezes come through the winter for your garlic harvest. Now another benefit to fall planting
has to do with the fact that garlic is day length sensitive. So what that means is that
garlic is spurred into putting on bulb growth in part by the amount of sunlight that's available
through the day so they will start to put on bulb growth when the day length starts to increase
by planting in the fall you're setting up your garlic for the optimal timing to start that bulb
growth right when it needs to. If you do want to plant your garlic in the spring you can have
success but keep a few things in mind. The first thing goes back to that dormancy period. Hardneck
garlic in particular requires vernalization and that is a period of exposure to cold and that
is what allows it to form a bulb. If it doesn't receive that vernalization, hardneck garlic will
tend to put on just one large ball basically that doesn't have any clove formation in it.
So you can mimic that natural vernalization that you would get by planting in the fall by putting
your garlic in the refrigerator. The shortest amount of time that I recommend is three weeks,
you can do up to two to three months if you have the time, again to kind of mimic the temperatures
that that garlic would receive if it were in the ground through the winter. Soft neck garlic on the
other hand does not require vernalization but it will benefit from it. So if you're planting soft
neck and you just want to throw it in for two to three weeks that will benefit the softneck garlic
as well. Now there are some gardening companies that sell garlic that has already been kept in
cold storage so that's something you can check too before you're buying garlic bulbs is if
the company has kept it in cold storage already basically your job's done for you. Another key
to spring planting success is that you want to get out and plant as early as possible
in the spring do not wait do not wait until you're planting the rest of your spring crops
get out there as soon as you can get a shovel in the ground and plant your garlic the longer you
wait the less chance that you're going to have a successful harvest of garlic in the summer.
And the final tidbit of advice that I would give you for spring planting garlic
is that you really want to baby it along and give it every opportunity to really surge into growth.
So feed it a ton of compost to make sure that it's getting adequate water, certainly you can do those
things with fall planted garlic as well, but I find that my fall planted garlic really doesn't
need much in the way of babying. So do you have your garlic planted yet? Drop a line in
the comments below and let me know. And if you find content like this helpful please consider
subscribing to my channel Growfully with Jenna. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time!