keep calm and plant garlic

Last fall, I grew some elephant garlic in the garden and this past summer I harvested over 50 heads or bulbs. Growing them was a painless process. I separated the cloves from the heads, and planted each in an upright position. I did not have to do anything much with them. A little weeding here and there, watering the plants when there was a dry spell, but otherwise, they were left on their own except for the occasional hi/bye in the garden and the grace of the spring rain.

I did want a stronger garlic taste and smell for roasting, making garlic peanuts and cooking Adobo.  But for some reason, I was late on a lot of things this year. It turned out I was also late ordering garlic from my seed catalogs and the ones I wanted were all out of stock. So I thought I'd try and sprout the garden variety garlic typically found in grocery stores.  

I used recycled soda bottles to sprout the bulbs. I cut off the top of the bottle and place the inverted top into the body of the bottle. The inverted top  is used to nestle the garlic head. The body of the bottle is filled with just enough water to touch the bottom of the garlic head. I found that some of the garlic heads are too big for the regular soda bottles.  I removed some of the outer cloves and kept them in the kitchen for cooking. I cleaned up the rest of the heads, trimming the dried roots and the tops. I sliced off the top of the heads/bulbs, just enough so you can see the exposed clove, then scored the bottom of the bulbs before placing each in the prepared inverted bottle top.  

This was probably one of the easiest ways of sprouting and planting garlic. I left the bottles in a recycled salad container in the kitchen counter, checking them occasionally to see that there is enough water in the bottles. It took a couple of weeks to get about 2-5 inch sprouts. The height of the sprouts was not uniform and I am guessing that's because the bulbs were not sitting flat on the inverted tops (some cloves had more access to water than others).

By mid-November, all but a few of the cloves have sprouted. I broke the garlic heads by gently separating each clove with their roots from the others. I then transplanted them to an outdoor raised bed I built just for garlic and onions. And now we wait. I'm excited to see if the raised bed would have a better production than the in-the ground planting. I also need to refine the bottle set-up so that the sprouts have comparable results. Other than that, I was very pleased with this experiment. Next time, I just need to get my act together before the arrival of the November frost.

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