How To Grow Garlic 2

What we re going to discuss here is how to grow garlic.
Garlic is actually a herb, but is grown more like a vegetable.
Each clove of garlic can be grown to form a new bulb, but DON'T use garlic cloves straight from the kitchen. While these MIGHT grow OK, the chances are that they won't so it's best to buy bulbs from a good seedsman or garden centre.
These are usually available in late autumn in packs of two or three which will usually give enough crop for the average family.
While you can sow garlic early in the year, autumn-sown crops seem to produce far better results. You might think this strange, since garlic is a Mediterranean plant, and you could be forgiven for thinking that frost and snow would ruin it.
Far from it! I've had garlic plants 6" high in weather down to minus 8 degrees C and nearly a foot of snow and they don't seem to mind!
Garlic appreciates a good, rich soil so dig in plenty of compost or horse manure or whatever.
Now take each bulb and carefully split it into it's separate cloves. Throw away any which are soft or showing signs of rotting or mildew.
Take a dibber and make a hole about 4" - 6" deep into which you drop a clove of garlic (pointed bit at the top!). Plant about 6" - 8" apart.
Push some soil into the hole with the end of your dibber.
And that's just about it. Hoe to remove weeds and, in spring and early summer, water if the weather is dry, remembering to give a good soak - don't just tickle the surface - since the roots are 6" - 8" below.
When the tops begin to yellow and die down, lift with a fork and let them ripen in the sun for a couple of weeks. I use duckboards, as I do for onions, (in fact they often crop at the same time as the onions) which lets the air circulate around and underneath the plants.
Once ripened they can be strung up as you would onions, or you can keep them in a small net. I like them in strings in the kitchen - let's face it, they aren't going to take up much room even if you grow enough for a family of four since you only need a clove or two for a recipe.
There's just nothing, to my mind, quite like the flavour of "wet" i.e. fresh, garlic in a recipe.
So now you know how to grow garlic, you'll want to do it every year.

About the Author
Jack West is a garden writer who has been growing for over forty years. His main interests are growing food and flowers for the house. Very recently he has discovered an amazing new way of making garden compost which is far, far better for plants than traditional methods! This is truly groundbreaking (sorry) stuff! Get the red-hot info here:-
http://kmeister.turnwill2.hop.clickbank.net/

Monthly Newsletter at
http://wwwtrevor-dalley-online.blogspot.com