How to Grow Garlic
Planning the Site
Garlic is quite tolerant of the type of soil it is planted in, but it does thrive better on sandy, clay, or loam soil that easily crumbles. It is also good to have the soil’s pH at 6. Choose a site that can give your garlic bulbs proper sunlight exposure.
Preparing the Site
The extent to which you should prepare your soil depends on the size of your site. If you have a big field, work up the soil by cultivating it. But if you wish to have only a small garden, spade up the top soil by 6 to 12 inches. The roots of the garlic bulb prefer to go deep. Mix with organic compost and manure.
Required Materials
In planting garlic, you would only need to use the basic gardening tools and materials. Garlic can be planted starting out with its cloves. It is best to plant garlic during the autumn. It should sprout its roots in the fall and grow a little bit. When wintertime comes, it halts its growth for a while until the weather becomes warmer in spring. It then starts to grow back again and proliferates as much as it can before the summer heat kills its leaves. When fall comes, you would see that on that same spot there would be a number of small garlic growing.
Watering Requirements
Garlic does not really like water that much. What it likes is moist soil. So when do you know when to water? Take some soil in your hands and clench it. Open your hands. If the clump of soil does not crumble, then it is wet enough. It is also important to water your garlic during its germination phase.
Nutrients Required
Garlic loves fertilizers, especially those with high nitrogen content. Using manure that would serve as dressing is also quite effective.
Results
You will know that it is time for harvesting when you see that most of the foliage is already yellow-brown in color. Don’t be misled by the notion that having the garlic under the ground longer would make it bigger. You must know when the garlic is ripe, and when it is, you could go right on ahead and harvest.