Homegrown garlic is an excellent, straightforward plant-it-in-the-ground -and-leave-it crop. (Garlic)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Garlic
Date:	01/08/09 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Grows well and easily, doesn't seem susceptible to garden pests, cloves mutliply into proper bulbs!

Disadvantages: Needs a tiny bit of attention to dry out properly if fresh garlic is to be stored long-term.

Having just converted a segment of lawn to veg bed late last spring, in a moment of grow-your-own enthusiasm we stuck in some garlic to see what would happen. I wasn't expecting much as we planted shop-bought garlic intended for culinary purposes, using individual cloves separated out from a bulb we purchased at Tescos' that we had in our fridge .

Apparently, as I now know, you should plant garlic in the autumn, as all accepted wisdom states that the plants require to be subjected to the cold temperatures of winter to 'activate' them into growth the following spring. I didn't know this, but fortunately our spring-planted garlic was kick-started into growth anyway - probably by having spent a couple of weeks in the veg crisper in our refridgerator.

The first green shoots appeared within a week of planting, and the plants were soon sprouting more leaves and had grown to a foot and a half tall. By the end of July most of the plants had started putting up flower stalks, which is apparently the time when the garlic should be harvested. As our garlic had had such a short growing time, I was doubtful that we would get much retun on our 'crop' but each clove, even in the short time it'd been in the ground, had divided into a small, but perfectly formed individual garlic bulb!

Our home-grown garlic cloves are admittedly quite small but are definitely worthwhile - we haven't enough of a crop to need to dry the bulbs out for long-term storage, and at present each clove is covered in a very pretty, rosy-pink skin. They are nice and juicy and the taste is exactly like 'normal' garlic.

Some grow-your-own experts on the internet tell you that for planting, you have to buy garlic intended for cultivation from a garden centre - but in my limited experience, supermarket-bought culinary garlic works quite well as well. Even with a short growing period we got a perhaps five to six fold 'return' - in terms of individual garlic cloves multiplying into bulbs - and I think with autumn-planted garlic this would be even better. The plants themselves take up very little space and don't seem vulnerable to attack by garden pests (namely, in our plot, slugs and snails), so if you like eating garlic and have even a small amount of space available to grow it, this is an excellent plant to have in your garden!

Summary: Great garden crop suitable even for limited planting spaces.