Watering garlic is crucial for its growth and health. Start after the last frost in your area and give it at least 1 inch of water every week. Once the leaves start to turn yellow in the middle of summer, stop watering to prevent bulb rot or splitting. Garlic generally likes its soil moist and should receive around an inch of water per week, with a slight increase if the weather is warm.
To grow garlic, determine the right time to plant, prepare the planting site, break up the bulbs, plant cloves at the appropriate depth, and water and mulch the bed. To improve bulb size, water garlic during dry spells in spring and early summer. However, don’t water once the bulbs are large and well formed, as this could encourage scape removal.
Softneck varieties are the most common garlic type in supermarkets, providing the greatest number of cloves per bulb. In soil with ideal drainage, garlic requires between a half-inch and one inch of water per week. If it rains less than a half-inch in a week, make up the difference with supplemental watering. It is best to water deep, but infrequently.
The best time of day for watering is during the morning or mid-afternoon, allowing enough time for the plant foliage to dry before cooler temperatures arrive. Water thoroughly after planting and regularly thereafter—about once a week. There is no need to water fall-planted garlic over the dormant winter months if necessary.
On clay soils, heavy watering spaced out over longer periods is best, while shorter, more frequent watering on sandy soils is ideal. Watering should stop about once the bulbs are large and well formed.
In summary, garlic needs about an inch of water per week, whether through rain or artificial means. To grow garlic in water, follow these steps: select the right cloves, place them in a bowl, add water, wait, and harvest the sprouts.
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Garlic root zones are not two inches deep. Dig a test hole down 8-12 inches to determine moisture content where the roots are actually working. If you squeeze soil and water drips out then no need for more water. I grew commercial hard neck varieties (rocamboles, purple stripes and porcelains) for over a decade. Average bulb size 2.5″ to 3″. Sold it for $15 a pound with only 4-5 bulbs per pound. (Largest were 10-12 ounces each.) Grew 25K per acre. In 12 years we never irrigated. We focused on maintaining soil tilth and nutrition. Added 100 yards of organic compost per acre every 2 years. As soon as we harvested we planted restorative cover crops: mustard, oats, fall rye etc). Every three years we started a new generation of seed garlic from our best bulbils. If you continue to replant cloves from the same lineage you will find your bulbs shrinking regardless of your soil quality. They simply lose their vigor. Garlic plants are cloning machines. Every clove and every bulbil is a clone of the parent plant. However, cloves are largely products of the roots while bulbils are vegetative and are produced by the leaves. All plants have these two generative loci but garlic is unusual in that each location produces copies of itself that can be planted for the next crop. We always had our next replacement crop in the pipeline and that maintained the size. flavour and market value year after year.
It’s really great that you laid out the whole year, and with visuals. I’ve almost been fooled into an early harvest in June when the leaves started yellowing and drooping and looked like they were going to start to fall down. It is just hotter and drier in June and the garlic is starting to increase in size and bulb up so it needs more water. I increase the watering and July 15th or thereabouts harvest my large heads of garlic.
Excellent article, especially intro lol!! Completely agree with your approach with 1 variation. Last year we heavily mulch with maple leaves and added about an inch of compost on top. By the time spring came all bulbs came through. We didn’t remove the mulch and observed. We water maybe a couple times as result and had best harvest yet. Looking forward to adding your worm castings this year !!
Our procedure since the 1950s is: We plant in mid-October, fertilizing with bone meal in the furrow. When the leaves start to dry out in the summer, usually July, we harvest the entire plant and set it out to dry. After the leaves have dried, we cut them all off and separate the biggest bulbs for next years’ planting. The part I like about your procedure (drying the ground and letting the leaves dry), skips the step of laying them out to dry after harvest. (Blood meal is usually recommended as fertilizer but that stuff stinks to much to tolerate.)
Great article, lots of details. We live in western Canada near the Rocky Mountains and the weather here can be quite dry and extreme from the mountain effect. We’ve gotten snow or hail almost every June, July so it’s a lot different. We have freeze up occurs in October, November. Ground thaws in April, May depending on cold fronts. That said, I can use your info as a guide around watering. Thanks so much!
Great advice, I love that you’re trying to get so many people to discover the joy of gardening! I’ve been digging-in-the-dirt for nearly 60 years, and still at it (in SW Nova Scotia now). I firmly believe gardening not only enhances life and teaches so much about life, but also extends life through positive mental health. I do have a question for you about garlic. Each year we plant 6 or 7 garlic varieties, about 50 each. We’d had wonderful success for years until 2019, when we suddenly developed what we’ve identified as penicillium infection in our crop, making a good portion of the bulbs become dry and ruined after harvest. We know we could try a systemic fungicide or a powdered fungicide (such as Bordo), but hate to resort to that. We do maintain a careful 3 to 4-year rotation, and we’re hoping this year that the infection won’t carry over from our planting stock bulbs (we always choose the biggest and healthiest looking garlic bulbs to replant cloves from, but it’s impossible to know if spores survive). My question is this: could composted sheep manure (cheap and readily available in our area) possibly be the source of the problem? Have you ever had anyone mention it? I’m wondering if there is a flow-through from penicillin antibiotics given to the sheep, a common practice on modern farms. As an experiment this fall, for the first time ever we’ve added no sheep compost at all to the bed in which we’ll be planting garlic. I plan instead to use foliar and surface feeding during the growing phase in spring 2022 and see what happens.
I know every area is different. I’m in Delaware USA, and my soft neck I had in raised beds was already starting to separate to flower, two weeks ago. The ones I had in-ground, a week later. My Hardneck is in a raised bed and in ground and I’ve already started cutting scapes for the past few weeks. I planted in The middle of Oct, right before the freeze or frost. Last season I even tried planting on the shady side of my garden 🤷🏼♀️ I think it’s just ready earlier in my area🤷🏼♀️ I get a good harvest, especially with Hardneck🤷🏼♀️
Hi Jordan, loved your article and looking forward to a great crop of garlic next July! My question is about pesky animals. I garden in Victoria where there are bunnies and deer by the score. Do I need to worry about deer, bunnies or any other animals getting into my garlic beds? Thank you for all that you do to promote mental health and gardening.
Thanks for this informative article. When I plant my garlic, I space the seeds about 3″ deep and 6″ apart in staggared rows and then put about 3″ of chopped straw on top for mulch. I try to always use the largerst seed. The bulbs nearly always turn out perfect, although some years they’re much larger and others much smaller. My neighbors also experience similar results. Is that due to the weather?
Once you cut the scapes (yours in July, mine in mid May zone 7b), how much longer before they are ready to harvest. Mine have turned quite yellow all over, but not sure if that’s because they didn’t get supplemental fertilizer, or enough of it, as I used Alaska fish fertilizer with an equal dose of their flower fruiting blend) twice a month for the last month or so. Still going yellow and starting to fall over. Harvested a couple and the bulbs aren’t very large, but they are there and quite sharp with the sulfur, hot). I don’t want to risk them going to mush so perhaps I will shut off the watering and harvest in two weeks, let it be what it will be. Mid June harvest.
I got small garlic bulbs, should all my garlic have scapes? Because I only got a few scapes. I have been growing garlic 15 years but this was the first time this has happened. We had a hard winter in March (Ca9b) could that have been the issue? My garlic also is ready to harvest by Jul 1 which according to everything Ive listen to thats to early, again not enough water? I plant in Oct/Nov
Thanks Jordan ! One other question that I had was this : When it’s time to stop watering prior to harvest, if there is a “rainfall warning”, would it be best to cover the area where the garlic is ? Last year more than 1/2 my bulbs were mush come harvest time. What’s the best thing to cover it with ? TIA
I did the first way and wow my garlic stems are so long including the roots I’m gonna start putting them in soil although there are some peices that didn’t grow and j think it’s cus I struggled putting the garlic in the water perfectly so some places didn’t grow but there is a lot That did thanks to you 😊
Greetings from Pensacola Florida🦩🌞🐕 A complete step by step guide in growing Garlic – going to plant mine this weekend and hope they turn out a harvest as well as yours. 🙏🏻 Thank you so much for sharing. One more thing- what is the plant with the beautiful white flower you showed in the article? Is it the barrel cactus or from same family and also what do you do to get cactus to bloom- do you use fertilizer?
Nice article, and very informative about gardening. I love gardens, and would love to be able to have one day. I just need to earn money to buy a house and land. Then get a descent greenhouse, with a heater inside to make sure I can keep my garden year round. I was able to grow garlic inside, start it anyways, but I think the smell was causing problems for my apartment. Sometime last year I tried a hydroponics garden. It was very successful at growing, but the pump gave out. All my plants died when I tried to save them. I now have to start over. I am now trying to get stuff to grow and make sure I cna start up my hydroponics again. This time I have some more pumps, but I would love to do one garden with soil instead. Owning a greenhouse would be great.
Hello, I really love your articles. They are so amazing and informative. However, I live in an apartment with a patio, but the patio is shaded. And I notice most of my plants die. ☹️ I’ve managed to hang some pots and they got sunlight. Do you have any suggestions on what vegetables I can grow with these conditions. Thanks.
All you need to regrow garlic or onions are just the very bottom of the bulbs. Just cut the bottom off the bulbs. Cut them about just less than a quarter inch from bottom. Then keep in shallow dish very little water. When they root plaint them very shallow in soil. With dirt about 4 inches bellow them.
What is the thing that pokes out of the side and in your hand at 00:34? Also, what variety is that? I know you said Kashmiri garlic, but I’m confused because I planted a random clove from the store and it has one of those things hanging off of it now that I pulled it up, and the foliage and bulb looked the same. Thanks for the guide! 🙂
I appreciate this article but it’s not everything needed to know. When do you place in soil? How far apary? Do they have to be split up? Can you plant the entire cluster bulb as one? How do you water after putting in soil? How do you know they are ready for harvesting and should you wait to eat after pulling up?
Those must be in the same family elephant garlic which is in the leek family, you can save those corms for planting later or plant them in the fall to begin the process again, the small corms take two years to produce cloves, whereas the cloves multiply into multiple cloves in one year. I like growing this kind of garlic because it’s less spicy but more nutritious and it can be used in more recipes due to the milder taste in my own subjective opinion