If garlic’s your thing, don’t wait for spring

Just when you thought you were done with veggie gardening for the year, I’ve got a project for you.

Fall is the perfect time to plant garlic because it needs several months to produce large bulbs. It’s easy to grow so let’s get started.

Since crop rotation is important, choose an area of your garden where chives, shallots, leeks or onions haven’t been grown for the past few years. Turn over the soil to a depth of about 12 inches and incorporate plenty of organic matter like compost or manure.

Garlic comes in two main types, hardneck and softneck.

Hardneck garlic has a stiff, main stem that is surrounded by a ring of large cloves. This type sends up a flower stalk known as a scape which needs to be removed. Scapes are delicious, having a milder garlic flavor, and can be added to pasta dishes or used in garlic pesto.

Softneck garlic is the type sold in grocery stores and has an outer ring of large cloves and an inner ring of smaller ones. Gardeners often braid softnecks together to hang in their kitchen.

Elephant garlic is actually a different species than regular garlic. It is characterized by its huge cloves and milder taste, but can take two years to produce a bulb of large, individual cloves.

With more than 300 varieties of garlic available, choosing some for your own garden can be difficult.

My husband, who is a garlic aficionado, grew German Porcelain, Inchelium, Silverskin, German Red and Elephant garlic this year and was pleased with all of them. (See the accompanying information box for sources of seed garlic.)

Garlic can be planted in the spring, but you won’t be rewarded with large bulbs, so I prefer planting it in the fall.

To plant garlic, separate the cloves within each head and plant them with the pointy side up, 2 to 3 inches deep and about 4 to 6 inches apart. Some sources recommend spacing rows of garlic a foot apart, but we were able to squeeze a lot into our raised bed by going with a spacing of 4 inches in all directions.

Once your cloves are planted, cover the surface of the bed with 6 inches of mulch. You can use shredded leaves, grass clippings from an untreated lawn or weed-free straw.

In early spring, push aside the mulch in order to let the new sprouts grow in earnest. Be sure to water your garlic bed regularly during the growing season and pull any weeds that come up so they won’t compete with the garlic for light, moisture and nutrients.

The nice thing about garlic is that it is pest-free, so insects aren’t a problem. As a matter of fact, garlic does a good job of repelling insects, so it is a valuable addition to the garden. Good companion crops are lettuce and beets.

Garlic is ready to be harvested when the lowest two leaves have turned brown. Pull it up gently and place the plants on newspaper sheets or wire screen in a dark, dry area. They will need about two weeks for their outer skins to cure before they can be stored.

After removing the central stem, the bulbs can be stored in a dry place for up to eight months.