Garlic is some powerful stuff--and we're not just talking about the flavor. And lucky you, since garlic complements a wide variety of dishes, from meats and soups to breads and salads, it's easy to incorporate this nutritional workhorse into your diet.
How to Grow Garlic
You can grow garlic from the cloves in your kitchen, but bulbs from garden centers or catalogs produce better results.
- Snap off the biggest, best-looking cloves right before you plant.
- Plant in full sun in rich, crumbly soil about six weeks before the first freeze of autumn. This lets the cloves develop roots before winter, so shoots develop rapidly in spring.
- Plant cloves three to five inches apart and two to three inches deep, tips pointing up. Cover with several inches of mulch.
- In spring, weed carefully around the green shoots. Stop watering when the green tops begin to brown, and harvest when two-thirds of the tops have dried. Gently loosen soil around the bulb. Never pull it up by the stem.
- Dry plants in a single layer or string them together and suspend them. In two or three weeks, snip the tops to two inches and cut back the roots. Whole bulbs will keep for months in cool, dry storage. Don't refrigerate them--this encourages sprouting, which makes the cloves bitter.
Contact your local garden center or horticulture extension office to find out what grows best in your own backyard.
From Backyard Living magazine. Subscribe to this and other publications here.
What's this?