I was given this pot of garlic but I don’t know what to do with it! Do I plant it as is (as a clump), or do I separate the shoots and plant in rows in my garden?
Thanks in advance!
by Necessary-Cut4846
5 Comments
the-skazi
That’s an unfortunate little pot of garlic, you may end up with many small heads.
I would just leave it as is in the pot, you can’t really transplant garlic.
Davekinney0u812
Where approximately are you located? Do you have room to transplant them outside?
I’m not well really versed in garlic, know a little and grow it casually. So, there is soft neck garlic which is typically grown in the south and hard neck garlic grown in the north. I’m around toronto so I grow hard neck which is a fall planting. As I understand, the winter freezing triggers something in the garlic that makes it form the large cloves.
Hard to tell what those are or if they’ll form multiple cloves in the bulbs like traditional garlic. If they were mine I would carefully transplant them outside asap and hope. The worst I think would happen is you’d get just 1 large bulb in the fall. I’d eat some and try planting some this fall for next year. Also, there is some maintenance that needs to happen during the growing season.
That pot is way to crowded, right. That garlic is still pretty small really, using your deck boards as a reference, you could gently dump the pot and as carefully as you can tease each plant apart, maybe with the help of some gentle running water to wash some of the soil out, and replant it in the ground at a reasonable spacing. Preferably it would happen very soon and you would hope for a good stretch of cool wet weather to help them with the shock of it all. It’s risky because the plants might be too far on to survive this treatment, and those that do survive might not make great bulbs anyway after this rough and late start. But I think being up there is Ottawa you might be just getting your season underway so it could be worth a gamble. Garlic is not commonly transplanted like this, but based on how tough it’s cousin the onion can be when young (you see those banded piles of sad onion transplants at the garden center!?) I think this could work. I would choose this route personally, if you have the space and the garden is ready.
Second suggestion is to enjoy most of those little guys as green garlic. A pot that size might make 1 decent sized head or 2/3 smaller heads of garlic, with very attentive watering and fertilization. So as carefully as you can remove all the plants but the 1-3 you want to keep and eat the others (you don’t have to do it all at once). I treat them like green onions and they’re great. I generally find them better in cooked applications than raw, personally.
Let us know how it goes!
MoonshineMaven
I would leave them in the pot as I’ve never really seen anyone transplant garlic. I would thin the pot out so it wasn’t so crowded. Sacrifice a few to save the many kind of thing. If you leave it as is you’re going to end up with a bunch of tiny bulbs not worth the effort or water you’ll end up using on them.
HorizontalBob
Normally, you’d grow hard neck garlic in the ground with more space. Plant in October and harvest in July. Let cure for a few weeks.
If you pull some now, it’ll look like a green onion, but taste garlicky but different. Search for spring garlic recipes.
It does look crowded, so I think you’d get very very small bulbs if you let it go. I really don’t know if I’d just let it for or try to thin it by picking some early.
5 Comments
That’s an unfortunate little pot of garlic, you may end up with many small heads.
I would just leave it as is in the pot, you can’t really transplant garlic.
Where approximately are you located? Do you have room to transplant them outside?
I’m not well really versed in garlic, know a little and grow it casually. So, there is soft neck garlic which is typically grown in the south and hard neck garlic grown in the north. I’m around toronto so I grow hard neck which is a fall planting. As I understand, the winter freezing triggers something in the garlic that makes it form the large cloves.
Hard to tell what those are or if they’ll form multiple cloves in the bulbs like traditional garlic. If they were mine I would carefully transplant them outside asap and hope. The worst I think would happen is you’d get just 1 large bulb in the fall. I’d eat some and try planting some this fall for next year. Also, there is some maintenance that needs to happen during the growing season.
I like this guy for garlic
https://youtu.be/k2C3L6APVrw?si=wYCJJOlnEaAwouEc
I have two suggestions.
That pot is way to crowded, right. That garlic is still pretty small really, using your deck boards as a reference, you could gently dump the pot and as carefully as you can tease each plant apart, maybe with the help of some gentle running water to wash some of the soil out, and replant it in the ground at a reasonable spacing. Preferably it would happen very soon and you would hope for a good stretch of cool wet weather to help them with the shock of it all. It’s risky because the plants might be too far on to survive this treatment, and those that do survive might not make great bulbs anyway after this rough and late start. But I think being up there is Ottawa you might be just getting your season underway so it could be worth a gamble. Garlic is not commonly transplanted like this, but based on how tough it’s cousin the onion can be when young (you see those banded piles of sad onion transplants at the garden center!?) I think this could work. I would choose this route personally, if you have the space and the garden is ready.
Second suggestion is to enjoy most of those little guys as green garlic. A pot that size might make 1 decent sized head or 2/3 smaller heads of garlic, with very attentive watering and fertilization. So as carefully as you can remove all the plants but the 1-3 you want to keep and eat the others (you don’t have to do it all at once). I treat them like green onions and they’re great. I generally find them better in cooked applications than raw, personally.
Let us know how it goes!
I would leave them in the pot as I’ve never really seen anyone transplant garlic. I would thin the pot out so it wasn’t so crowded. Sacrifice a few to save the many kind of thing. If you leave it as is you’re going to end up with a bunch of tiny bulbs not worth the effort or water you’ll end up using on them.
Normally, you’d grow hard neck garlic in the ground with more space. Plant in October and harvest in July. Let cure for a few weeks.
If you pull some now, it’ll look like a green onion, but taste garlicky but different. Search for spring garlic recipes.
It does look crowded, so I think you’d get very very small bulbs if you let it go. I really don’t know if I’d just let it for or try to thin it by picking some early.