Gardening: There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Garlic

I can never grow enough garlic. No matter how much I plant, we end up eating it all before the next harvest. Now is the best time to plant it.

It’s pretty easy to grow, as long as you select the correct variety. Like onions, garlic is sensitive to day length. We have shorter days here in Texas, so we must plant varieties suitable to our area.

There are two basic types of garlic – hardneck and softneck. Hardneck varieties do not generally grow well in Texas or anywhere in the south for that matter. Hardneck varieties will not form a head until they get 13 hours of daylight. That doesn’t happen until the hottest days of the summer, but garlic prefers to grow in cooler weather.

So here in Texas, we’re stuck with softneck varieties.

You can try to plant garlic cloves you buy at the grocery store. I’ve done it before with some success. But you don’t know whether the varieties you buy are hardneck or softneck. I planted some cloves last year that never developed heads. I’m pretty sure they were from a hardneck garlic.

This year, I’m going to order some “seed” garlic. Seed garlic are just cloves of garlic that are intended to be planted instead of eaten. You could eat them, but growers sell the best heads seed garlic and, accordingly, charge more for them. I’ve been reading about a variety called “Texas Rose.” Apparently, this variety has been popular in South Texas for many years.According to some sources, it used to be called “Hallettsville garlic.” Since we live so close to Hallettsville, I figure I’ll give this variety a try.

You can plant garlic in rows, but if you do so, you’re missing out on garlic’s incredible powers as a companion plant. I prefer to plant bulbs of garlic throughout the garden.

Garlic repels many insect pests. If you have problems with spider mites, try planting garlic around the affected plants. It also prevents many fungal problems such as powdery mildew and rust diseases.

Slugs and snails can sometimes attack garlic. But you can deal with those using a beer trap. Just pour a few ounces of cheap or stale beer in used tuna cans. Set these around the garden where slugs and snails are a problem. They’ll crawl up the side of the can and drown in the beer. You’ll be amazed at how many you’ll catch.

Garlic takes a long time to reach maturity. If you plant in the next few weeks, you’ll probably harvest around May. Just watch the tops. When the tips start to turn yellow, the garlic is probably ready to harvest. You should harvest them before the leaves turn brown and fall over, though. The bulbs tend to split and deteriorate if you leave them in the ground too long.

They don’t require much care. Just be sure to plant them in the right direction. Look at how the cloves separate from the head. Plant the root end down. Or you can plant them sideways to be safe. Water them during times of drought. But don’t over-water. That’s the easiest way to kill garlic. They like a good layer of mulch.

Elephant garlic is garliclike plant that’s even easier to grow in our area than regular garlic. Elephant garlic is actually in the leek family, but it produces a head similar to garlic, only much larger. It tends to have a milder flavor than regular garlic.