Garlic is one of THE most popular crops to grow in fall, and for good reason.
It's a super long season crop. There's a ton of different varieties.
And while it is a relatively easy plant to grow, I find that many people,
myself included in the past, have had some problems growing garlic.
So in today's video,
this will be the first part of a multi-part series on growing garlic from the
seed garlic or the clove. So in this video,
we're going to be talking about hardneck versus softneck, different varieties,
including all of these ones you see here,
bed preparation and planting and mulching.
As well as just some general garlic tips on timing, pre-soaking et cetera.
So stay tuned.
If you want to be a hundred percent notified of updates to this garlic series,
please make sure and Like and Subscribe.
Otherwise you just won't know that the next part's out. But without further ado,
let's go ahead and talk about the different types of garlic.
So when it comes to garlic,
there's really two sort of classifications that matter,
that would be softneck or hardneck.
I'm going to discuss softneck first because I am growing in a warmer climate.
If you're growing in a colder climate, hardneck is a little bit more suitable,
although you can still make hardneck work down here in zones 10b, 9, et cetera.
But the first one we're looking at here, this is California early.
This is the most commonly cultivated garlic in America, I believe.
And for good reason. As the name suggests,
it can grow in many different climates. It does not require a super cold season.
It's a softneck garlic variety.
So it's a little bit more productive as far as bulb size.
And it comes to maturity relatively easy. So that's a softneck garlic.
And as you might imagine,
the difference between softneck and hardneck is the neck.
And so let's take a look at this garlic right here. This is Thai purple garlic.
This one, as you can see, has a hard neck in the middle.
Now the difference between these two, and there are quite a few,
is not only the neck, but the flavor.
Oftentimes hardneck varieties are said to have a more garlicky flavor.
Whereas softneck varieties can be a little bit more mild.
Now that's kind of up to your own palate,
but I do find that that holds to be the case with this hardneck garlic.
For example, this Thai purple has a little more fire, a little more spice,
a little more variety and distinction in the flavor that is within these
beautiful cloves here. Now,
these typically also do require a cold period.
They require vernalization to really produce well.
And so what I've done here in my warm climate here in San Diego, California,
is I've faked the vernalization period.
What that means is I've taken my hardneck garlics like for example,
this one right here, this is Shandong.
I've taken these and all research indicates that the longer you can keep them in
the fridge, up to about three months or so, the better.
Eight weeks being the minimum. I could get about six weeks.
So I've had these in the fridge for six weeks in a folded brown paper bag.
That's just to not completely suffocate them,
but not also dry them out completely either. So, decent amount of humidity.
You don't want to really desiccate these things.
So these are actually still a little bit cold as I've just pulled them out. Now,
another difference between hardneck and softneck garlic is that with your
softnecks, like again, the California early that I'll pull out right here,
the clove structure is quite different.
There's way more cloves per bulb on softneck than hardneck
because of that hard neck that's going through the middle that prevents clove
formation right there.
And so what you typically have is larger but lower amount of clothes on the
hardnecks. And you have more cloves, but they're generally smaller per clove,
on the softnecks. Now there is a third type of garlic, kind of.
This is elephant garlic. It is actually closely related to the leek,
much more close to the leek than it is to garlic.
But this is one single clove of elephant garlic. For comparison,
here's our Shandong hardneck garlic variety.
It's relatively the same in size. So elephant garlic, true to its name,
is a massive producer.
We will be planting this in this video but there are some special planting
considerations when it comes to elephant garlic.
I'm just going to rapid fire through a couple of the varieties that I am
deciding to grow for this season. So first of all, we have the classic.
This is kind of my fail safe. This is California early. It's very,
very well suited to my climate. Next, we have Spanish roja,
a hardneck garlic variety with a bit larger of a bulb.
And just a really interesting look to it. We then have Thai purple.
You can tell because of this purple striping on the garlic, that looks amazing.
We have the Shandong that I've referenced a couple of times here.
We also have a Georgian crystal.
This is a very distinct hardneck garlic and you can almost see one, two, three,
four cloves per bulb on this particular one that I just pulled up.
Next we have in Inchelium red, I've been told this is a fantastic producer.
So we're going to try this guy out. Then we have lorz Italian,
which is supposed to be mostly just like a classic Italian variety of garlic.
We have Xian. And I'm going to show you this one's very interesting.
The coloration on Xian is very, very purple on the skin.
So I'm just very intrigued by this one and excited to grow it. And then finally,
like I said, we have our elephant garlic,
and I've got three cloves of that elephant garlic.
So those are the varieties we're working with. Now,
what we need to talk about is some timing and pre-prep for the cloves.
And then we'll talk about what to do in the actual garden. When growing garlic,
of course you need to separate your bulbs into their constituent cloves.
But what's really important here is to be very discriminatory when you're doing
this and only make sure to plant the largest cloves.
So let me go ahead and dismantle this lorz Italian garlic right here.
And then I'm going to be very,
very particular about the ones that I decide to plant.
Because this is a long season crop
and the very last thing I want to do is put a long season crop in and not use
the best, best cloves that I possibly can. So here I am,
separating all of this out. One just went flying, but it seemed pretty small.
So there's a lot of the paper that I need to filter out here.
And let's say I just want, I don't know,
five or six bulbs of my lorz Italian. So let's sort it out.
Like this is a very large clove. And in fact, nope,
it's actually two cloves.
But this is still a pretty good sized clove right here.
So I'm going to separate that one out. See what you get with softneck garlic,
you see all these like tiny little cloves.
You don't want to plant something like this.
It's just not going to do that much for you. So this, I mean like,
look at the drastic size difference between these two. Which would you plant?
I'm going to go with this guy right here. So I'm going to set these all aside.
And don't feel that you're wasting.
Of course you can just go ahead and use this garlic as garlic. And so these,
to me, look like the most promising ones over here. Perhaps this one,
and maybe this one here or this one.
The rest of these are all very,
very small and they're going to make their way into my cooking,
into my kitchen or as garlic powder.
These are going to be the ones that I'm using of my lorz.
Italian.
what we're going to do is something that I haven't done when planting my garlic
and it is an optional step. And that would be a presoak.
So here I have eight cups of water.
And what I'm going to do is add two key ingredients.
We have some baking soda and we have a little bit of fish fertilizer.
You can use kelp fertilizer. I just didn't have any on hand.
And what this is going to do is it may help start the rooting process just a
little bit faster, similar to when you presoak other types of seeds.
Even though these are cloves, not seeds.
So we're going to sprinkle about one and a half tablespoons of baking soda in
here.
And then what we'll also do is mix in just a little bit of this fish fertilizer.
It can be a little stinky. Again, I would recommend kelp.
I just don't have any on hand. So we're going to try the next best thing.
And we're just going to give it a little bit of a couple of dollops here.
This is from Alaska. I really like their fish fertilizer product.
But we're going to mix this in.
And then I prepped separate jars because the last thing you want to do is have
just spent all this time separating and filtering out your best cloves and then
mix them all up together.
So we're going to do that and I'm going to let this soak no longer than 18
hours. So honestly, a couple of hours is good.
We may do it in the morning tomorrow. We'll kind of see how it goes.
But now we're just going to put these all in their Mason jars, let them soak.
And I highly recommend that you label the jars or have a labeling
system. I have my whiteboard here then I'll know,
and I'll just place the jar right over the label.
Garlic is an extremely heavy feeder throughout the season. It grows in a long,
long season. So we need to make sure we do our bed prep correctly.
I've got a three foot by four foot bed here.
We're going to add a couple different amendments just to make sure that we're
getting our garlic off to the right start.
You don't need to go crazy at the beginning of your garlic's life, though.
What I will say is you want some kind of compost.
I have some soil conditioner here.
I have alfalfa meal and I also have neem cake fertilizer.
So you guys know neem oil,
neem cake is the pressed cake that's left after extracting the oil.
It still has a lot of anti-pathogenic and anti-pest properties.
And it also has a pretty decent nitrogen phosphorus potassium ratio.
So we're going to add that in there.
But before we add in all of our amendments and prepare our bed,
we do want to make sure we loosen the soil a significant amount.
Garlic wants a nice loose soil.
So this is very much overkill for a bed of this size,
but I do have a quick little broadfork that I'm going to hit this with and just
gently loosen the soil up.
We're gonna add a couple inches of this compost.
We're going to add a handful or two of the neem cake.
We're going to add a little bit of the alfalfa meal as well.
After that we need to make sure we mix it in nice and good.
Make sure you pick these guys out while you're at it.
While our garlic is soaking let's go ahead and talk about spacing and depth.
I like to use something like this, a dibber.
You could use literally anything that pokes a hole in the ground.
But for most of these varieties,
anywhere from four to six inches apart is a good idea. So I start in the corner,
giving my corner a little bit of extra room,
and then I just come around and I start laying out my planting.
A little bit of diagonal action can also help. Now,
the only thing I'll say is that when you're doing elephant garlic,
which again is closely related to the leek, it will put out bulbils.
And so you'll need to space them out quite a bit further than you would a normal
garlic. And I honestly would recommend growing them in a separate area.
So I would probably end up doing mine in containers,
which is what I'll end up doing.
So let's go ahead and mark the rest of this out so that when our garlic has
finished soaking, you can just go ahead and get straight to planting.
It's the morning, we have let our garlic soak.
And the first thing to know is the planting direction,
which is very intuitive I hope, but let's go ahead and mention it.
So you want to go roots down and stem side up.
So pointy side up otherwise your garlic is going to be in a whole lot of
trouble. As far as planting depth for your garlic,
I've got my California early here and this is going to be climate dependent.
Most of us grow through fall, that experience is a frost.
And so you want your garlic to be protected from that frost and certainly to
root up and have a robust root system before the frost comes.
So if you're in a colder zone, you plant deeper, maybe four to six inches deep.
I'm going to plant about two inches deep.
And then we'll go ahead and talk about the mulch. And remember, pointy side up.
We're planted in. It is now mulch time. So again, colder climates, more mulch.
Warmer climates, still you can use a lot of mulch,
but you don't have to go super, super hard on the mulch.
I'm going to do about three inches or so.
Sometimes it's recommended up to four to six inches if you are in those
extremely cold zones.
You just don't want these to go through a freezing and thawing cycle because
that's going to push them up to the surface.
And it's just not that good for a young developing garlic clove.
So let's go ahead and mulch it up.
So garlic can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a little bit over a month,
depending on the depth that you planted it at, to actually come out and sprout.
So definitely be patient after you've planted your garlic.
But that's it for this first part of the garlic series.
Much like my dragonfruit series, which you can watch,
if you look in the upper right-hand corner, I'm going to do this in parts.
Garlic is an extremely long season crop.
I'm not going to be harvesting this until probably the end of spring next year,
2020. And it's November right now in 2019. So follow along,
definitely hit the Subscribe button if you'd like to be notified of updates.
And then over here and over here and over here and over here,
there's a bunch of different things that you can check out that are also in the
Epic Gardening universe, like the podcast, all the social, everything else.
So until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.