Growing great garlic

August 11, 2012 — It’s almost time to get your garlic in the ground! Mike Mcgrath reveals how to grow great garlic and how to best use this years harvest. Plus your fabulous phone calls.

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I’ve been growing garlic for several years, saving and replanting my largest cloves in rich soil, about 5″ apart, in a raised bed in October. I normally harvest around the end of July. I went away at the beginning of July this year and didn’t dig up any garlic first—even though the bottom leaves were getting brown and our chrysanthemums had already finished blooming. The stalks were mostly brown when I got home ten days later so I quickly pulled all the garlic. The bulbs are huge and beautiful, but the cloves are separating from the stalks. I’ve read that they probably won’t keep well now, and that maybe I should peel and freeze a lot of them. But what can I do to preserve the best cloves for planting my new crop later this season? Will they last until October just hanging in a dry place? (We don’t have air conditioning, so there is no “cool place”.) Should I put them in the refrigerator? Freeze them? I’d appreciate your advice ASAP. Get the answer »