#35: Growing Garlic Step 1

Planting Garlic on the Waning Moon

Garlic: Propagating, Planting, and A Recipe for a Healing Broth

Garlic is one of my favorite foods and even though I plant more each year, it never seems to be enough. We eat a lot of it and I share heads with other home gardeners so they can propagate it, too. Share the wealth, right?

My current crop starts with one really good looking head I beg from another home grower at least six planting seasons ago—a gardener’s version of Oliver Twist asking, Please sir, can I have some more.

I don’t have to beg too hard but when I ask what variety it is, he doesn’t recall so I just call it John’s Big Red (JBR). Over the years, I’ve propagated the six cloves from that one head into hundreds of heads. This year, my planting is 250 cloves which will make 250 head.

I save the biggest and best heads to plant.

Today, I text a gardener on the bluff to remind him that the moon has just passed full and we are coming up on good days to plant root crops. He texts back that he already planted his cloves this morning from heads I shared with him—when we sat on the back porch stripping off the outer layers of skin and having a good conversation, too.

How to Plant Garlic