Name: CHEC Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-06-12T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-06-14T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Denver, CO

Tagged: gardening, garlic

This topic has 4 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 11 months ago by Doug Smith.

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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July 2, 2012 at 8:25 pm
Sue
Participant
….could you please help me choose a type of garlic to plant? I’ve only cooked using the store-bought elephant garlic, but I see there are many other types. Which kinds are easiest to grow? Are there some that are hardier than others? (I know they are hardy in general, but we do live in Northeast Ohio and it gets cooler starting right in early to mid-September.)
An unusually busy May/June and a huge mess left behind from some lilac bushes we had cut waaay back made it impossible to plant a regular garden of tomatoes, peppers, and such, but I really want to plant some late summer vegetables.
July 2, 2012 at 8:39 pm
Rachel White
Participant
You could check with your county extention service for the best recommendation. However, garlic is either hardneck or softneck and then there are varieties within those types. My understanding is that in the northern climates, grow hardnecks and in the south and west coast, grow softnecks.
http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/garlic-varieties
http://www.groworganic.com/catalogsearch/result/?order=relevance&dir=desc&q=garlic
HTH
July 2, 2012 at 10:24 pm
Doug Smith
Keymaster
You can grow either kind of garlic in many locations. The softnecks might be a bit easier to grow but neither are terribly difficult.
There are hundreds of varieties of garlic and they all have subtle differences in flavor. We’ve enjoyed planting several and tasting them for comparison.
Around here (Northern IL) we plant garlic in the late summer or early fall. Then we mulch over it to overwinter and harvest it in the spring.
July 3, 2012 at 4:12 am
Wings2fly
Participant
Would you start with planting a clove of garlic or what?
Would any other plants in your garden end up with a garlic taste or smell? Does this keep pests away from the garden?
July 4, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Doug Smith
Keymaster
You break apart the head of garlic and plant the individual cloves, root side down.
It doesn’t affect the taste or small of anything else. Pests don’t seem to bother the garlic itself but I don’t think it keeps pests away from anything else. Although, if you plant it interspersed with other plants it might confuse some of the bugs.
We do something like that with our eggplant because it always gets infested with flea beatles. It seems to help to plant something with a strong smell, like basil, between the eggplant plants.