Garlic is one of our best crops.  We invested $45 in locally-adapted garlic in 2008, and since then we've grown all of the garlic we eat and plant.  I estimate we've already produced about 60 pounds of garlic in the first three years, and we'll probably dig up another 20 pounds next summer.  Not a bad return on our investment, especially since we can keep planting the offspring of our garlic as long as we live.

The biggest factors involved in getting a stellar garlic harvest are:

• Choose locally-adapted varieties
• Use only the biggest cloves from the biggest heads as seed garlic
  
• Plant into well-drained, loamy soil
• Mulch well
• Snip off scapes of hardneck garlic in the spring
  
• Harvest bulbs at the right time
• Dry your garlic carefully
• Sort and store in an airy location
  

My list makes it sound complex, but I'd actually say that garlic is one of the easiest plants we grow.  If you don't live too far south, I highly recommend adding this delicious (and beautiful) crop to your garden.  Now's the time to plant!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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