Mario Bautista
In the next month your garden will likely have light frost on it. This light frost will knock out our warm-season vegetables including tomatoes, peppers and beans.
Luckily our cool-season vegetables will go on growing like nothing has happened. Some people even say that greens become sweeter after frost has fallen on them. With these cooler temps comes the perfect time to plant garlic in our garden.
Out of all of the things we can grow in our vegetable garden, garlic is quite possibly the easiest. It rarely has any disease, insect or deer issues. I’ve seen deer eat everything from tomatoes to okra, but I’ve never seen a deer eat garlic. Humans are one of the few creatures that actually eat garlic.
Garlic in Tennessee is planted between September and November. It is planted by carefully breaking the bulb and separating the cloves. Each clove should be planted between 1-2 feet deep and 6 inches apart. We generally fertilize when we plant to ensure that the plant gets a good root developed before winter hits.
Keep weeds at bay with some type of organic mulch that will slowly break down over winter. I use wheat straw to suppress weeds because too many weeds will prevent the garlic from forming a large head. The only hiccup with wheat straw is the residual seeds left in the wheat. After placing a couple of inches of straw over the planted bulbs, water them well.
Within a few weeks you’ll have the residual wheat seeds start to germinate. It’s best to go ahead and pull these as soon as you see them. Even though the garlic will be up and growing in the dead of winter, it will be just fine. There is no need to cover the plants because they can freeze solid and will not be affected.
There are two main types of garlic: softneck and hardneck. In Tennessee we can grow either, but it’s all based upon storage potential and the development of flowers. Softneck garlic has the longest storage potential and it’s usually the one sold at stores. It’s called softneck because the stem never forms a flower and it’s able to be braided.
Hardneck forms a flower and the stem is very firm. It also forms a larger clove, but it doesn’t store as long as softneck. My favorite cultivars of hardneck for Tennessee gardens include “Purple Glazer,” “Music” and “Chesnok Red.” Excellent choices of softneck garlic are “Inchelium Red” and “California White.”
We harvest garlic between May and June of the next year. Pull a few test bulbs to see how they are forming. Once the plants start to yellow from the bottom to the top, then it’s getting closer to harvest. If you wait too long then the cloves will separate and the bulb has the potential to rot in the ground.
After pulling the bulbs from the ground, hang them up in an area to cure them out of the sun. Many folks use the corner of their porch or garage. This curing process will help them have the highest potential for storability.
Lucas Holman is the Horticulture UT-TSU Extension Agent for Wilson County. He can be reached at (615) 444-9584 or Lholman1@utk.edu.
