How to Grow the BIGGEST Garlic

I absolutely love garlic – who doesn’t? It’s also pretty easy to grow, but sometimes we can be disappointed by undersized bulbs. So to help you grow the biggest, best garlic ever, I’m going to share my top tips that will DOUBLE the size of your bulbs. Let’s get planting!

Planting Garlic

Growing huge garlic bulbs starts right now. It feels almost counter-intuitive to plant just as it’s getting colder and other crops are winding down, but garlic is very hardy and giving the cloves a head start now will make a huge difference to the final size of bulb. Knowing exactly when to plant is crucial for success (more on that shortly).

Garlic will hate sitting in wet mud at any time of year, so if you’ve got a heavy soil then growing in raised beds should help to keep it well-drained and happy. Be sure to pick a sunny spot, because garlic loves to bask. Prepare your soil by removing any weeds and traces of the last crop, then add a fresh layer of garden-made compost to feed your soil and, of course, the garlic grown in it.

I also like to add blood, fish and bone fertilizer, which will break down into the soil over the winter months ready to power growth come spring. If you don’t want to use animal-derived feeds then any slow-release organic vegetable fertilizer with a slight bias towards potassium (such as an onion fertilizer) would work well.

When to Plant Garlic in Any Climate

Autumn is the time to plant garlic in most areas, but exactly when depends on your location and climate. In my relatively mild temperate climate I aim for late autumn, but in colder regions you’ll want to get your garlic in the ground by mid or even early autumn. As a very rough rule of thumb, aim to plant it around three weeks after your average first frost date.

Timing is so important. Garlic needs a period of cold weather to grow properly. Every individual clove will grow into a full bulb, but if they don’t get a long enough cold spell – or ‘vernalization’ – they simply won’t initiate proper bulb formation.

Garlic needs around 10 weeks of temperatures below about 45ºF (7ºC). If you’re growing in a warm climate (zone 10 or above), it’s unlikely you’ll manage to get this sort of chilling period, so instead just pop your garlic bulbs into either a paper bag or a mason jar with a lid and refrigerate them for – you guessed it – 10 weeks. This will mimic a decent winter and, once the time’s up, you’re good to plant.

There are some varieties that are suitable for planting in late winter or early spring, so look for these if you can’t plant in autumn and (unless otherwise advised otherwise on the packaging), give them the fridge treatment.

Knowing when to plant can really help you get the most from your bulbs. Get your garlic to chill and they’ll reward you with bigger bulbs!

How to Plant Garlic Cloves

Carefully break apart your bulbs into individual cloves. Each clove will grow into a completely new bulb. Isn’t that fantastic!

Space your cloves about 6in (15cm) apart in both directions. Giving the cloves plenty of space will both help to plump up larger bulbs and encourage more airflow between the plants. That’s important to reduce problems with rust – a very common disease that can slow down the latter stages of growth.

To plant each clove, make a hole about 5in (13cm) deep. Place the clove into the bottom of the hole with the pointy end facing up – that’s where the leaves will sprout from – and the flat part, from where the roots will emerge, facing down. Backfill the hole with soil so that the cloves are around 4in (10cm) deep.

Getting cloves in at the correct depth makes a big difference to the final size of your crop. At this depth the survival rate of the cloves is higher because they’re protected from extreme cold by the soil above: too shallow and they’ll be less protected, too deep and the shoots may struggle to make it all the way to the soil surface.

Another big predictor behind final bulb size is the starting size of the clove that’s planted. Bigger cloves give bigger bulbs – more bulb for your buck! So, if you have lots of cloves, prioritize the biggest as these will give you the best bulbs. Bigger really is better!

Garlic copes well with cold temperatures but hates wet soil, so if your ground tends to be saturated over winter it’s safer to plant your cloves into deep pots or plug trays, aiming to get them as deep as you can so that when you knock them out of their containers in spring it’s easy to plant at the right depth. Keep your potted garlic protected from the worst of the cold – somewhere like a greenhouse or cold frame would be ideal – as they won’t have the insulating effects of lots of soil around them. Transplant into the garden as soon as the soil is workable in spring.

Garlic makes a fantastic companion to many other crops because it’s superb at warding off many soft-bodied insect pests such as green peach aphid. It would be especially good around, say, apple and pear trees. If you’d like to discover more good companions for garlic, why not take advantage of a free trial of our Garden Planner and check out the Companion Planting feature – it’s jolly clever!

Hardneck vs Softneck Garlic

There’s a dizzying choice of garlic varieties to choose from, but they can broadly divided into two types: softneck and hardneck.

Softneck garlic is what you tend to find in the grocery store. The bulbs contain more cloves and store really well – up to a whole year in ideal conditions. It’s a good choice if you’re gardening in a warmer climate.

Hardneck garlic on the other hand has fewer, bigger cloves, and is well suited to colder climates. It has a stronger flavor, packing a pleasingly pungent punch. It doesn’t store as long as softneck garlic, but will still keep for several months.

Another little bonus to growing hardneck garlic is the flowering shoots that appear in the weeks before harvest. These curled stems, known as ‘scapes’, make a tasty bonus crop in their own right. I love them whizzed up into a sumptuous garlicky pesto – yum! You can use them just as you would garlic cloves, or flashed up in a pan with other early summer pickings.

In my mild, neither hot nor cold climate (equivalent to around zone 8), I can grow both types of garlic with ease, which doesn’t make choosing what varieties to grow any easier!

Year-Round Garlic Care

Once I’ve planted my garlic I like to mulch them with a snug blanket of fallen leaves. This isn’t strictly necessary in my climate, but the extra insulation will keep the bulbs active below ground for just that little bit longer, which means more growing time! In areas with severe winters I’d aim for at least a couple of inches (5cm) of leaves. To prevent the leaves from blowing away, lay some sticks over the top until they bed down and knit together.

As we head into winter, the root system below ground will be starting to really get going. We may well see short, stubby shoots make it to the surface before winter, but either way we know that what’s going on below the surface is, quite literally, laying the groundwork for a stellar season come spring.

As spring comes around, growth picks up with dramatic speed. Remove any weeds, and water in dry weather to keep the soil nice and moist but never saturated. Steady moisture will encourage the bulbs to swell. Stop watering once the bulbs start to mature, which you can tell by both the size of the bulb and at the very first sign of yellowing leaves.

As midsummer approaches, cut off any scapes that form. Removing the scapes will concentrate the plant’s energy into swelling those bulbs, so even if you don’t plan to eat them, it’s still worth snipping them off.

Harvesting Garlic

So how do you know when it’s time to harvest? When the lowest leaves begin to turn yellow and wither, this means the plants are winding down and there’s not much growing time left. Don’t delay harvesting for too long beyond this point, or the quality of the bulbs may start to deteriorate and won’t store for as long. To harvest, get your fork right under the bulb and lift it up from below while gently pulling on the foliage to encourage it out.

Harvesting can be at any point from very late spring to late summer, depending on when you planted garlic and the progress of the season, so look for those cues to get in there and dig them up. Don’t tidy the plants up at this stage – just move them to a sunny windowsill or hang them up to dry in the sunshine, out of the rain. Dry garlic like this for two or three weeks and the bulbs will store for so much longer.

Once the foliage has become rustle-dry, move your garlic into a cool, dark, dry place to store for several months. They can be hung up in braids, or just cut the old foliage off, leaving a stump of around an inch above the bulb, trim the roots, then pack them into breathable sacks or nets to store.

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