Growing Garlic: DIY Indoors to Outdoors [Gardening]

Growing garlic at home can be a fun project.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being super easy, and 10 being super hard, I would rate this project a 1. Everything is cheap and easy to acquire, and no fancy tools are required.

For those of you with a particularly poor success rate with growing plants and vegetables (the dreaded brown thumb), garlic is practically fool proof and provides quick results.

Follow along, and I'll show you how to grow garlic at home the easy way. Trick your friends and neighbors into thinking your have a green thumb by starting a simple garden of many healthy new plants.

Getting Started

At the grocery store I bought an entire garlic head. These things actually contain several cloves of garlic, all encased separately within the layers of the white papery shell.

Peel off some of the paper shell, until you can see some separation in the cloves, leaving one or two layers left, barely enough to hold the entire garlic together.

Initially I placed the head of garlic on top of a bottle full of water. I like to use filtered water to make sure there are less contaminants in the water. I think it is best to make sure that only a millimeter or so is touching the base of the garlic, to avoid causing it to rot. On the bottom of the garlic there are already some dry small roots, and a small bit of moisture will tickle those roots back to life.

Every other day or so, I also lifted the garlic out, and let it dry for a few hours to half a day. My thinking is this will prevent rot, and it will help the roots to develop a stronger cuticle coating. Dispose the garlic water and refill the bottle with fresh clean water every few days.

Within a week the garlic should look like this.

Signs of Progress

Little green shoots have started for emerge from the cloves. The cloves are starting to split and separate. The roots are elongating, multiplying, and spreading out in all directions.

Planting Outdoors

When roots have formed and the green stems have formed, it's probably time to get ready to plant the cloves. It's really fun to pull apart the cloves at this stage. They will fall apart very easily.

There may be a slight rotten dark spot on the bottom of each clove where the heel of the garlic head was. Pick off any rotten pieces with a fingernail and discard it. I also peel off all remnants of the outer papery white shell, leaving only one or two clean layers surrounding each clove.

Even if some of the cloves have not formed long roots or green stems, it is okay to plant them outside with the others. Space them apart one or two inches away, and put them in soil holes of about the same deepness. Cover with soft compost (crumbled dirt will do), and water deeply. In a couple days the green shoots should start to lift out to the surface.

Companion Planting Tip

If you have peas growing, plant the garlic away from them. Peas will be weakened by the sulfur chemicals that leach in to the soil by garlic, onions, and chives, and it will spoil your pea harvest.

Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Broccoli, Cauliflower, and Mustard Greens all enjoy having garlic planted nearby, because the odor deters pests.

What Time of Year to Plant?

Actually I'm not totally sure on the answer to this.

My general thinking is that when the garlic outside starts to die, I start over and plant new ones. I planted garlic last year. It lasted all winter, even through the snow, it still had tender green shoots. It started to wither in June. It was bolting and wanted to form a flower, but I cut that off. It was basically done growing anyway.

Since this is the time of year that onions and garlic are normally dropping their seeds, I figure this is also a great time of year to plant fresh cloves of garlic.

Similar Projects

Green Onions (also called Chives, Spring Onions, or Bunching Onions) can be started in the same way. I usually buy a bundle at the grocery store and I cut off the green tops to use in my cooking, and then save the white bulbs on the bottom.

Place the white bulbs in a small bowl of water, and in a week roots will form, and new green stems will rocket upward.

These rooted Green Onions will be going into the planting area next to my Cabbages and Brussels Sprouts.

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All original photos in this post from @creativetruth.

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