Spring Garlic Care + A Guide to Harvesting and Curing
Garlic has a pretty long growth cycle from planting to harvest. Cloves or “seed garlic” are planted in the fall, and then you can largely forget about it over winter, until it begins to grow again the following spring.
Even during the growing season, garlic is a laid-back crop that doesn’t require much fuss. I’ve been guilty of forgetting all about it while trying to get all my spring seeds and seedlings in, and I still got a nice garlic harvest. The most time I spend on my garlic crop each year is during harvesting and prepping the bulbs for curing, which might require one morning’s commitment. However, watering as needed, fertilizing some, and keeping an eye out for common pests and disease can lead to bigger yields and nicer bulbs.
Don’t have any garlic in the ground yet? Planting at the correct time for your area is super important for good garlic bulbs. To learn more about different garlic types, preparing a planting site, and when to plant for proper bulb development, read this post first:
Homegrown Garlic: How to Plan and Plant Your Crop for a Top-Quality Harvest
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Caring for Garlic Plants in the Spring
As soon as the soil thaws and the days lengthen, you’ll see garlic shoots emerging early in the spring. They’ll often pop up before the last hard freeze is over, which isn’t a problem. Young plants may get frost-bitten leaf tips or burned new growth if they experience a freeze close to the single digits, but they’ll outgrow the damage just fine.
In most cases, garlic doesn’t have trouble sprouting through mulch. However, if you’ve mulched the bed deeply (4+ inches), it’s helpful to remove a few inches or pull it back once sprouting begins. This way, the shoots can reach the light without a long struggle. Start checking beneath the mulch for new sprouts as soon as you’re seeing the first signs of spring.
Weeding
By far, the most important garlic growing task to stay on top of is weed control. Garlic has a small, shallow, and hungry root system that does not compete well with tons of weeds. Even a few weeds allowed to grow too large can affect final bulb size. Make sure to keep your garlic bed cleaned out and pull any weeds while they’re still small. Mulch helps a lot to limit weed growth, but you’ll still have a few pop up.
Watering
With a good mulch layer, garlic doesn’t need a whole lot of water in the early spring, when temperatures are cool to moderate. Once the plants get bigger and the afternoons get hotter, they benefit from a deep watering once per week during dry weather.
Fertilizing
To really max out that bulb size, you can also feed your garlic a few times during the growing season with a high-nitrogen fertilizer. When I remember to, I side-dress our garlic rows with some blood meal once after shoots emerge and again when the plants are tall and have five or six leaves. Any fertilizer that’s higher in nitrogen is a good pick for garlic.
While garlic is definitely partial to nitrogen, it’s important you don’t feed it too late in the season. Around mid-spring, garlic plants will switch gears from leaf growth to bulb development. Feeding nitrogen after this point can confuse the plants into continuing with leaf growth, at the expense of final bulb size. My cue that it’s too late to feed is when the lowest leaves begin to yellow and die off (not including any that took cold damage over winter).
Garlic Pests and Disease
Garlic is a hardy crop that doesn’t have nearly as many potential pest and disease problems as other garden plants. Still, there are several issues that can show up on occasion.
Pests
Onion Thrips
You almost need a magnifying glass to see these tiny, black, cigar-shaped bugs, which tend to hang out where the leaves meet the stalk on garlic plants. Their feeding can cause white or silvery blotches, stippling, or streaking on the leaves.
Healthy garlic plants can handle thrips feeding without any trouble aside from cosmetic damage. We see them every year in our patch and rarely treat for them. However, very heavy infestations might lead to droopy plants and reduced bulb size. If your garlic plants are downright crawling with thrips, Spinosad is a good organic treatment option. Two treatments timed about one week apart will knock out a thrips infestation.
Note: Spinosad is a broad-spectrum insecticide that will harm beneficial insects if they’re around when you spray. We try to use it only when absolutely necessary and spray in the late evening when pollinators aren’t out.
Aphids
The black, shiny variety of aphids typically attack garlic and other alliums. While a few won’t cause any problems, they can reach Biblical plague levels if mischievous ants get involved, causing twisted and distorted new growth. Ants will “farm” aphids for their honeydew excretions, protecting them from predators and allowing them to multiply and completely cover a garlic plant. We’ve seen this several times in our garlic patch, and it’s a sight to behold!
To treat an aphid-infested garlic plant, hose it down with your garden hose sprayer on a higher-pressure setting to knock the aphids off. Garlic plants are plenty tough enough to handle this treatment. For really bad infestations, we follow the blast with a Neem oil treatment to mop up any stragglers.
Wireworms
Wireworms are the larvae of click beetles, which live underground for years in the larval stage and feed on roots, tubers, and, unfortunately, growing garlic bulbs. These awful little critters are the worst pest we have to deal with in our garlic crop. Usually, you won’t know you have wireworms until you pull a lovely garlic bulb only to discover a shiny, segmented, bright orange worm has tunneled into it.
Wireworms are most common in garden plots that were once uncultivated lawn grass (so, lots of home gardens). You can try reducing their population by making “wireworm traps” with chunks of raw potato on a skewer. Bury the trap in the soil, wait a week or so, then dig it up and dispatch any wireworms in soapy water.
A big part of our strategy for our wireworm problem is to simply plant extra garlic. That way, we’ll still have a good haul even if they damage a fourth of our bulbs. Damaged bulbs are salvageable if you discard the chewed cloves, but they’ll need to be used soon after harvest rather than cured for long-term storage.
Onion Maggots and Allium Leaf Miners
Both allium leaf miners and onion maggots lay eggs on developing garlic shoots. The larvae then burrow into the bulb, leading to holes and rotting. These flies are only an occasional pest of homegrown garlic, usually in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. If you have ongoing problems with them, the best approach is to cover your garlic with fine-mesh insect netting during the growing season so the flies can’t get to it.
Diseases
Garlic is vulnerable to a handful of diseases. The worst of these are soil-borne fungi that lead to neck and bulb rot, such as White Rot, Botrytis Neck Rot, and Fusarium Basal Rot. The best way to avoid these is to start with certified seed garlic and make sure your soil has excellent drainage.
Allium rust in another disease that can affect harvest quality in certain regions, mainly those with cool and humid weather throughout the growing season. Rust begins with small yellow or white flecks on leaves that later lead to orange blisters and leaf dieback. If you find you have trouble with rust in your area, you can stave it off before it starts the next season with an organic preventative spray like copper fungicide or Neem oil.
Garlic plants can also suffer from mosaic viruses. In many cases, the only symptoms will be yellow striping on the leaves, and the garlic will still produce normal bulbs. Sometimes, though, viral disease can result in sad plants and small bulbs. Viral problems in homegrown garlic most commonly happen when you plant store-bought garlic instead of certified seed garlic.
When is Garlic Ready to Harvest?
Garlic takes approximately 8 or 9 months from planting time to produce fully-developed bulbs, but this can vary depending on weather conditions. Hardneck garlic can also take a few weeks longer than softneck types to reach maturity. To pinpoint the right harvest time, you’ll need to watch your plants for the signs.
Here’s what to expect and how to care for garlic plants within the few weeks before harvest:
Leaf Dieback and Lodging
Garlic plants will start to look pretty shabby in the early summer, when harvest time is near. The leaves will begin to yellow and then dry up, starting from the base of the plant. Once you notice two or three of the bottom leaves have withered, stop watering the garlic so the bulbs can dry a bit before harvest time.
Each remaining green leaf on your garlic represents a protective layer around the bulb. The goal is to harvest when just the right amount of protective layers remain; having either too many or too few can shorten the bulbs’ storage life. Bulbs are usually ready to dig once about half of the main leaves have died off and five or six are still green. Sometimes (but not always) softneck garlic stalks will lay over when the bulb is mature, which is called lodging.
Scapes
Hardneck garlic will produce scapes three or four weeks out from bulb maturity. Some say that harvesting the scapes once they’ve made one full curl will increase final bulb size (might as well, because they’re delicious!). You can also leave the scape on one or two of your plants as a harvest indicator, for later. When the scapes uncurl and point at the sky, the bulbs are ready.
The Bulb Check
If you think your garlic is ready to harvest, you can carefully dig the soil away from one of the bulbs without disturbing the roots. Check for defined “shoulders” and make sure you can feel distinct cloves. Alternatively, go ahead and lift a few bulbs. If they happen to be underdeveloped, they’ll still be tasty, and you can wait about digging the rest.
How to Harvest Garlic Bulbs and Prepare for Curing
Don’t be tempted to yank garlic bulbs up like you would a carrot or beet. Matured garlic bulbs still have a well-anchored root system, and it’s easy to damage or snap the stalk if you pull from above. You want your stalks intact for curing. When it’s time to harvest garlic, I like to use a large spade to loosen the roots and lift from below.
In order to store long-term, garlic bulbs need a curing or drying period after harvest. Don’t wash the bulbs or cut the stalks or roots after you dig them, as this will interfere with the curing process. Instead, just brush the dirt off once it dries. If the bulbs are REALLY dirty or have dried mud on them, it’s completely fine to peel away the first intact layer of the bulb wrapper to remove the worst of it.
Many growers say you should never take scissors to any part of the garlic until after curing is complete. Personally, I prefer to trim off the bulk of the leaves, leaving only the stalk intact for curing. I seem to have fewer rot or mold incidents this way, and I’ve found the bulbs cure a little faster without any quality loss. This could have to do with the conditions where I cure my garlic, so I’d recommend experimenting with both methods to see which works best for you.
Curing Garlic Bulbs
Curing garlic isn’t a complicated process. All you need to do is hang it up in small bunches or lay it out flat in a dry, warmish area with moderate humidity, out of direct sunlight. The ideal curing conditions for garlic are temperatures between 70 and 80 degrees F and humidity between 45 and 50 percent. You’ll be fine as long as you’re somewhere close to that range.
Garages, spare bedrooms, and basements are all good curing spots. In climates that don’t have insanely high humidity at night, you can also cure garlic outdoors somewhere that’s protected from rain, such as on a covered deck or beneath a carport.
Note: Be aware that fresh garlic, unsurprisingly, has a strong, permeating garlic smell. If you decide to cure your harvest in the guest bedroom, plan on that room being practically uninhabitable during the curing process (unless your guests really love garlic).
Good airflow is essential for proper curing. If you’re laying your garlic flat to cure, you’ll get the most even drying if you have a breathable surface to lay it on, such as a wire rack. I cure mine on the same racks I use for seed starting in the spring.
If you don’t have a rack, you can lay your garlic out on a solid surface like a table and turn the bulbs once a day or so to promote even curing. An oscillating fan on low also helps with the garlic curing process, whether you’re hanging or laying flat. It’s especially helpful if you need to cure your garlic harvest indoors.
How Long Does Curing Take?
Garlic bulbs take anywhere from two to four weeks to completely cure, depending on the curing conditions and the size of the bulbs. In my experience, hardneck garlic takes a bit longer than softneck, closer to the four-week mark.
When the bulbs are fully cured, the stalks and leaves should be mostly brown and dry. The skins around the bulbs will feel papery and brittle, and they’ll tighten up some around the cloves. The roots should also be stiff to the touch.
The stem check: When curing hardneck garlic, you can cut the stalk on one of the plants about six inches up from the bulb. If it’s fully cured, you shouldn’t see any green left inside the cut stem.
Post-Curing Storage Prep
Once your garlic is fully cured, you can trim the roots up and cut back the stalks. Leave about a half an inch of the roots and two inches of stalk. Cutting too close on either end may shorten the shelf life a bit. Any remaining dirt should be dried up and easy to brush off with a soft-bristled brush.
Cured garlic bulbs need continued airflow during storage. Avoid airtight containers and go with something like a mesh produce bag, a cardboard box, a wire/wicker basket or crate, or upcycled pantyhose legs (seriously). Mine usually go in a random cardboard box with the lid open.
In a perfect world, garlic bulbs will keep for the longest at temperatures of 55 – 65 F, in a dark place with low humidity. For me, that temperature range is a hard ask during August and September here in the South. I just keep them in a dark pantry cabinet, which sometimes hits 75 F during the afternoons, and they still keep for a long time when properly cured.
Don’t forget to set aside next year’s seed! Seed garlic is expensive, and there’s no need to buy it every year if you reserve some of your harvest to plant next season’s crop. Pick your prettiest bulbs with nice, fat cloves to use for seed garlic, since these will produce the largest plants. How much to save depends on how much you want to replant: softneck bulbs can have around ten or twelve plant-able cloves (seeds), while hardneck varieties have around five to seven.
How Long Does Cured Garlic Keep?
Not only is it really easy to grow, garlic is also one of the easiest crops to save your own “seed” from. That’s because the bulbs mature so close to the fall planting window for next year’s crop. Even hardneck varieties, which don’t tend to store as long as softnecks, are easy to keep in good shape for a couple of months after harvest. Invest in some good quality seed garlic once, and you’ll likely be able to grow garlic from that same stock for decades!
