How to Grow Garlic at Home

If you have ever cooked with garlic then you already know the wonderful aroma garlic emits.  Whether you are frying garlic up to mix with some onions for a steak or adding garlic to a sauce, garlic is the epitome of recipe versatility.

So it makes you wonder why garlic is not grown more at home.  Garlic is easy to grow, as you will see, all you need to do is get the space ready in your garden, set up your soil and choose a variety.

Let’s start with the space your garlic will need.  This will depend on how much garlic you want to grow, but when planning, account for 6 inches of space between each garlic clove planted.  In a four foot by four foot raised bed, that accounts for ninety-six garlic cloves planted (if my math serves me correctly).  If that amount is too much, and really, can you plant too much garlic? Just be sure to down size accordingly.

Now that you know your space, you need to set up the soil your garlic is going to grow in.  Garlic loves soil that is rich in organic matter and drains very well.  If you are planting your garlic in a raised bed that will help with the drainage.  As for the soil itself, mixing in some peat or coir with finished compost or even well seasoned manure along with some perlite or vermiculite will go a long way.  As a side note, try to keep your soil’s pH above 5.8 but less than 7.

When planting the garlic clove, the pointed end should be facing up.   If you plant the clove upside down your garlic will develop a curved shoot and that will lead to misshapen bulbs.

Garlic comes in two basic varieties, hard neck and soft neck.  They are then broken down into a larger number of types.  Your local garden center or co-op can tell you which types grow best in your area. 

While you can plant the cloves from the garlic available at your local supermarket, it is not recommended.  You will not be sure which variety of garlic you are getting or whether or not that garlic can even grow in your area.  Purchase plantable garlic cloves from your local garden center, organic if possible.

Once you have your garlic cloves planted, be sure to cover with 3 inches of mulch to help protect them from potential frost.  Straw or hay works great.  This helps protect your cloves as well as keep weeds to a minimum.   It also helps conserve moisture in the soil.

The soil for your garlic needs to be moist.  Water regularly, however, do not overwater.  You don’t want to saturate the soil.

The best rule of thumb when it comes to harvesting your garlic is, when half your leaves are brown and the other half are green, your garlic is ready to be pulled.  This may vary based on variety and your location, but it’s a good rule to get you going. 

How to read the back of your Vegetable Seeds Packet

You just recently picked up your vegetable seeds (or have received your Seeds of the Month Club seeds) that you are going to plant in your upcoming vegetable garden. You are fairly new to vegetable gardening, but wanted to give growing fresh veggies from seeds a go. You have a number of reasons as to why you would like to grow directly from vegetable seeds dancing through your head ranging from the challenge of growing from vegetable seeds up through, quite frankly, growing veggies directly from seeds is simply fun.

You turn over your vegetable seed packet to see what you have to do to your vegetable seeds to ensure you are successful at growing them, and what you see is a lot of vegetable gardening information, that you simply find confusing.

What does it mean to space out your vegetable seeds? What is vegetable seed spacing between rows? And what does it mean, Days until the vegetable seeds are mature? For many, the information on your vegetable seeds pack can be a little confusing. Hopefully, I can clarify a little of that vegetable seed information for you.

Planting Depth
Your planting depth, tells you exactly how deep or shallow your vegetable seeds should be planted. In our example packet of vegetable seeds, you see that your planting depth is a quarter to a half inch. That means your vegetable seeds should be planted no deeper than a half inch and no shallower than a quarter inch. This ensures that there is not too much soil op top of your vegetable seeds and just enough soil for your vegetable’s roots to take hold.

Seed Spacing
Once again using the example vegetable seed packet, you can see that the recommended vegetable seed spacing is two inches. When you initially plant your vegetable seeds make sure they are spaced out at the distance written on the vegetable seed packet. With smaller vegetable seeds, such as celery, it is nearly impossible to properly space out your vegetable seeds when initially planting them. In this case, plant plenty of those vegetable seeds and then when they sprout, use a pair of scissors and thin them out to the recommendation on the vegetable seeds packet.

Days to Germination
This piece of data lets you know how long it should take for your vegetable seeds to germinate. The information provided is the best case scenario (on the example vegetable seed packet that number would be five) up through the worst case scenario (on the example vegetable seed packet that number would be fourteen). The best case for your vegetable seeds would occur under optimal conditions, i.e., plenty of sun, regular watering, optimal temperatures, and ideal nutritional source for the vegetable seeds such as fertilizer or compost etc. Chances are your vegetable seeds will germinate closer to the middle of that range, although many have great success for their vegetable seeds closer to the optimal day.

Spacing after Thinning
When you initially plant your vegetable seeds as per the Seed Spacing recommendations discussed earlier, you would not leave your sprouted vegetable seeds at that distance. Your vegetable seeds simply would not grow well. What you have to do now is space your sprouted vegetable seeds out a bit further to give the vegetable plants’ roots (as well as the vegetable plant) plenty of room to grow. On the example vegetable seeds packet we see twelve to eighteen inches as the ideal range to space out your vegetable plants once they sprout, with twelve being the minimum. The more you space your vegetable plants out, the better chance they will have to grow large and in the case of tomatoes, peppers etc., they may even produce more fruit.

Days to Maturity
The days to maturity value on the back of your vegetable seeds packet is the recommended time frame as to when you can expect to harvest the vegetables you are growing. In the vegetable seed packet example provided, the days to maturity for Kale is fifty-five to seventy days. So, somewhere within that time frame your vegetables should be harvested. Conditions will also dictate this time frame as well, such as drought, heavy rains, and cold weather and so on. The days to maturity time frame on the back of your vegetable seeds packet is also a great gauge to use when your growing seasons are short. It will help you calculate exactly when to start your seeds indoors. All you need is the date of the last frost in your area (provided by the USDA frost zone map), days to germination (on your vegetable seed packet) and the days to maturity (on your vegetable seed packet) and you can calculate when you should start your vegetable seeds indoors.

Soil Depth (not shown)
You will never see this data on any vegetable seed packet, however, I wanted to bring it up, because it is very important for many who grow vegetable plants in pots or in raised bed vegetable gardens on patios. This is how deep your soil bed should be for your vegetable seeds. It is not written on the vegetable seed packets because of the room constraints of the vegetable seed packet itself, as well as assumption that they, the vegetable seeds, will be planted in a “regular” garden. Although, as you will come to find out, a regular vegetable garden is whatever you make it. As for depth, you want at least sixteen inches deep of soil as well as the recommended thinning space, to give the roots plenty of room to expand. The more room the better.

On one final note. You will see a copyright date on your vegetable seed packet. In this example you see “Copyright © 2012”. This is the copyright of the information on the vegetable seed packet itself, this date has absolutely nothing to do with the vegetable seeds inside the vegetable seed packet.

Storing Your Vegetable Seeds Part 1

There are a number of manufacturers and suppliers of Vegetable Seeds. Farms that sell vegetable seeds in large quantities to vegetable seed distributors to smaller clearing house vegetable seed providers that you can find selling quantities of vegetable seeds more suitable for a small to medium sized vegetable gardens  such as those selling vegetable seeds on eBay and the like.

As a disclaimer, I too operate a company that sells vegetable seeds. Specifically we sell those vegetable seeds to home vegetable gardeners. We buy our vegetable seeds in very large quantities, from farms that, obviously, sell vegetable seeds in bulk. We do so to keep the costs of those vegetable seeds at the lowest possible price and in turn we pass those savings onto our customers.

I would imagine that other vegetable seed companies, who cater to the same home vegetable gardening audience, do the same when procuring their quantities and varieties of vegetable seeds.

But specific vegetable seed companies are not what I wanted to talk about in today’s article on vegetable seeds (or for those that are listening to this transcript via our vegetable seeds podcast).

I wanted to address a great issue on vegetable seeds that I receive questions for from our followers on our Facebook page, where we discuss vegetables seeds and vegetable gardening all the time.

The most popular question on vegetable seeds that I receive, is without a doubt, “how do I save and store my vegetable seeds so that they can be used for future growing seasons?”

For me personally, I like to store my vegetable seeds in a cool dry location. That would translate into putting my vegetable seeds in a plastic container, such as a tupperware or rubbermaid bowl. A resealable ziploc bag works great as well for storing vegetable seeds.

I make sure, that whichever packaging I use to hold the vegetable seeds, they are sealed tight. The vegetable seeds, will then go in a cabinet that I have in my basement, specifically for the purpose of vegetable seed storage. Well, ok, the vegetable seeds do share space with some of the kids’ toys. But that is a whole other topic.

The temperature in my basement is fairly constant throughout the year, which is a perfect storage environment for my vegetable seeds. I have vegetable seeds that are over 5 years old and am still getting great germination success rates on them.

For example, the rule of thumb on many variety of onion vegetable seeds is two years and then the germination rate begins to decline. This past season I grew some onions directly from seeds, sewn into a four foot by four foot raised bed and did well with them. These particular vegetable seeds were 6 years old! I had about an 85% germination rate of these particular vegetable seeds.

Let’s say you do not have a basement to store your vegetable seeds. What do you do then? That is exactly what I will talk about in Part 2 of Storing Your Vegetable Seeds. Some of our Facebook followers came up with some great and unique ways to preserve their vegetable seeds.

About the Author 
Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us. Be sure to join Mike`s vegetable seeds mailing list. 

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club: