It’s time to plant garlic.
That’s right: Just about the time you should be planting ornamental bulbs such as daffodils and tulips, you ought to be thinking about the culinary rock star that is garlic.
It’s one of the hardiest, easiest crops to grow in the rainy Northwest, virtually free of problems caused by animals, insects or even diseases. And you can grow innumerable varieties not sold at grocery stores or even farmers markets.
In Western Washington, garlic enjoys the perfect environment: Cloves start growing roots and leaves in fall and winter.
In the spring and early summer, they swell into bulbs.
Then, just when the weather is at its driest when they don’t need the moisture, they begin to dry out in the ground, right on time for harvest.
It’s also a little something to look at in your winter and spring veggie garden.
Here’s what you need to know to get started on this most satisfying winter garden crop, best planted now through Halloween.
Sun: Garlic needs full sun to give you big, healthy, happy bulbs. That’s at least six hours of direct sunlight, ideally much more during high summer.
Drainage: Though garlic is one of the hardiest crops on Earth, it can succumb to rot if it becomes waterlogged, especially in winter. Like most vegetables, garlic likes soil that holds enough water to feed its roots, but not so much that it can’t dry out and come up for air. Adding compost to most garden soils will do the trick. See tinyurl.com/gardensoil for an excellent primer on soils.
Space: Garlic harvest doesn’t come until July. So wherever you plant garlic, don’t book the space for other crops until late July, when most garlic should be taken out of the ground to be dried and stored.
Correct planting: To plant garlic, break the bulb into individual cloves. Leave the skins intact.
Place the butt end of the clove down. It will sprout the roots. Put the pointy end up. It will be the sprout.
Cover with 1 or 2 inches of soil. Space them at least 4 inches apart in rows 18 inches apart. Bigger cloves produce bigger yields.
Feeding: Steve Solomon, in his book “Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades,” recommends feeding garlic first with organic fertilizer at the soil level after the green shoots appear, again with blood meal in late February and again with organic fertilizer in April.
Water: When the days start getting shorter, after the summer solstice in June, garlic bulbs stop getting bigger. This is the time to stop watering.
Harvest: When you see that one-third to one-half of the leaves above ground have dried out, it’s time to take it out of the ground to be cured. For a detailed guide for curing and storing garlic, go to www.hoodrivergarlic.com.
Where to buy
• Retail: Check with your local garden center (such as Sunnyside Nursery, 3915 Sunnyside Blvd., Marysville; 425-334-2002; www.sunnysidenursery.net) or feed store (such as Cenex Co-Op Supply, 2901 State St., Everett; 425-259-5571) for garlic seed stock.
• Online: See Filaree Farm of Eastern Washington at www.filareefarm.com, Territorial Seed Co. at www.territorialseed.com and Hood River Garlic of Oregon at www.hoodrivergarlic.com.
• Note: Though garlic seed stock can be expensive at the outset (about $10 to $15 for a half-pound), remember: You can plant some of your harvest in the fall for your next summer crop.
What to buy
Garlic comes in a variety of flavors ranging from mild such as elephant garlic to spicy hot such as Asian Tempest. There are two main types: hardnecks and softnecks.
Softnecks, which store the longest, are the varieties most often found in grocery stores. Their soft stalks can be braided for easy storage. Softnecks produce six to 18 cloves per head in layers around a soft central stem.
Hardnecks, which don’t store quite as long, but are easier to peel, are considered to be “the gourmet, the finest-tasting true garlic” worldwide, said Snohomish organic garlic farmer Chuck Long, who grows more 50 varieties of hardnecks at Anselmo Farms in Machias. Hardnecks produce five to 10 cloves per head in a single circle around a central woody stem, which sometimes produces a flower stalk known as a scape. Scapes can be picked and eaten. Picking the scape helps direct the plant’s energy back into the bulb.
Long said the most popular variety he grows is the hardneck Spanish Roja, a Northwest heirloom that was reportedly brought to Oregon before 1900.
Sarah Jackson: 425-339-3037; sjackson@heraldnet.com.
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