We grew an enormous bed of garlic this year. We are growing for three families and the other families age growing other field crops to share with us and each other. Garlic is an easy crop if you do a few things right.
First off, garlic likes the soil to be amended with lots of organic matter. This is good for the garden as garlic has to be strictly rotated on a four-year cycle. Failure to rotate garlic leads to a build up of diseases and the loss of your crop. The necessity of digging in compost to garlic beds improves the garden soil for the next crop.
It is a good idea to use a garden fork to dig up the garlic. They are really too deep to just pull. Once the crop is up all the dirt must be brushed off the garlic bulbs and the crop must be hung up to dry for two weeks. After that, the stems and roots should be cut off and the outer papers rubbed off. Then, the garlic can just go in a burlap sack, hung up somewhere with a bit of airflow and away from the frost. We hang our garlic in an unheated, insulated porch over the winter and it keeps really well.
When I am cutting off the stems and roots, I look at each crown critically and keep the finest, largest crowns for seed. I only use the largest cloves for planting and my garlic has increased in size over the years. Garlic cloves should be planted in a fresh, well composted bed in late August or early September. They also love a mulch of seaweed which can be harvested responsibly from our many beaches. Just don’t drive on the beaches and don’t take all the seaweed.
Of course, we have started eating the fresh garlic already and it is a wonderful treat. The garlic is so crisp and flavourful right now. I am sure it is at its most potent. The time for scapes is past this year. The scapes are the flower stalks that come up from the middle of the plant and must be snapped off to prevent energy going into the flower that should be going into the bulb.
The scapes can be chopped up and frozen, pickled or dried for winter use. A lot of people like to make garlic scape pesto and that is very tasty. They also make very good dill pickles and can be used in all the recipes that garlic is use for.
Once you have the garlic dug up, brushed off and hung up, it is time to do something with the empty garlic bed. This is a good time to plant some winter lettuce but what I favour is to plant field peas, buckwheat, oats and kale. The peas and buckwheat create a flush of flowers which are very beneficial to the pollinators. The oats send down deep roots that will aerate the soil and add carbon to the soil once the cover crops die. All the cover crops can be cut and fed to hens, rabbits, ducks and sheep. Don’t cut too much off as the soil microbes need it for food in the winter.
It is important to cover the soil. The sun has a very bad effect on soil which is why soil is almost always covered up in nature. Healthy soils are always covered. The sun heats bare soils very quickly and this had a drying effect. Soil microbes need food, water and shelter, just like any other animal.
The peas, oats and other cover crops will grow roots that hold the soil together and protect it from rain. The top growth protects the soil from becoming too hot and dry. The cover crops will be killed by the winter weather. The dead residue will protect the soils and provide food for the soil organisms. The crop residue will act as a mulch over the winter to spring and prevent weeds popping up. The crop residue is also food for the soil organisms who are so important to the structure and the fertility of the soil. Cover crops are a very easy and clever way of improving garden soils. In the spring, just turn the crop residue under before planting a new crop. This too enriches your soil.
Crop rotation is very important. This year’s garlic bed may not be planted with any onions, garlic, chives or leeks for at least three more years. I have a field garden which is divided into four quarters an each year, I plant in the following bed. Potatoes must be rotated and they are a greedy crop so I always like to follow them the next year with beans which fix nitrogen and enrich the soil.
Garlic is an important crop, both as a flavouring vegetable and as a herbal remedy especially for colds and flu’s. Happy gardening!
