Saturday 2 July 2011

Growing Garlic

By Joseph Robertson

Garlic is an excellent spice to include in our indoor herb garden collection. To begin, growing garlic has small cost outside of our standard indoor herb growing set up - that might include a number of growing lights if you are without direct sun for a lot of the day. Other than that, growing garlic is as straightforward as taking a garlic blub, removing the individual cloves and planting those. A note of caution however - corner store garlic tends to be sprayed with chemicals to control the ability of the garlic to sprout, which is not what we'd like! It is recommended that you buy bulbs from a specialist. If you cannot find one, then I would recommend starting off with organic garlic.

There's one main thing to keep in mind with garlic. This is a sub soil growing plant - although it does have leaves above soil, the bulb grows underneath it. That suggests the most vital thing to keep under consideration here is drainage. You do not need your garlic sitting in water, or it'll simply rot. That's one of the reasons indoor growing is so well suited - it is simple to set up a pot with excellent draining for the garlic to grow in.

Re the pot that you're going to use to grow your garlic, there are a few straightforward guidelines to bear in mind. You need your little garlic cloves to be spaced about 3-4 inches apart when you plant them. The diameter of your pot will determine how many you can plant - however you do desire your pot to be 10-12 inches deep. A handy place to start might be a 12" diameter pot that is 12" deep. You would then plant your cloves - pointy side up - about 1.5" under the surface, and 3-4 inches apart from each other.

Most endorse planting garlic in October/November - this is actually for those growing outside. You need to plant before it becomes too cold , but for around a month after planting, you want to keep the pots in a cool place - about 50 degrees F. Ensure you keep the cloves well watered during this time. At that point its simply a matter of watering regularly - again you do not want the cloves sitting in water and therefore rotting, but you do not need the soil getting too dry either.

Follow these steps then approx 10 months later you could have full bulbs prepared to crop. A quick note on harvesting: It could be a small challenging to work out when to crop them. If you harvest the garlic bulbs too early, then they will be tiny. There are two ways you can figure this out - if you dig up a bulb and check the layers, if there are 3 layers on the outside then it is prepared, if there are more then it isn't. On digging up bulbs - don't pull them out by the plant, instead use a spade and fully dig them up. Another way to tell that they are prepared is to hang around for the leaves to start browning. If you planted in October/November, this can be around Aug/September the following year.


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