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Garlic

Push a clove in during autumn, ignore it all winter, and lift a whole head the following summer.

1. Buy certified seed garlic, not supermarket bulbs, which are often treated and carry disease.
2. Split the bulb into cloves the day you plant, keeping the papery skin on each clove.
3. Plant only the fat outer cloves and cook the small inner ones.
4. Push each clove in 5 cm deep, flat end down, 15 cm apart in rows 30 cm apart.
5. Mulch with 3 cm of compost and leave the bed alone over winter.
6. Weed from late winter and feed once in early spring with a nitrogen-rich feed.
7. Snap off the curling flower stalks on hardneck types in late spring and cook them as scapes.
8. Lift when the lower third of the leaves have gone brown but five or six green leaves remain.

Soil

Free-draining, fertile, pH 6.5 to 7. Waterlogged winter soil rots the cloves, so use a raised ridge on heavy ground.

Sun

Full sun all season. Garlic in shade makes leaves and a single round bulb with no cloves.

Water

Little in winter. From spring give about 15 litres per square metre per week, then stop three weeks before harvest so the wrappers dry properly.

Spacing

15 cm apart, rows 30 cm apart

Depth

5 cm deep, flat base down and pointed tip up

Care

['Keep the bed weed free. Garlic gives up quickly against grass and chickweed.', 'One nitrogen feed in early spring, then nothing after the bulbs start swelling.', 'Remove scapes on hardneck varieties, which adds noticeably to bulb size.', 'Stop watering three weeks before you expect to lift so the skins go papery.', 'Do not plant where any allium grew in the last three years.']

Harvesting

Timing matters more than with any other crop here. Lift when about a third of the leaves have yellowed and the rest are still green, because each green leaf is one intact wrapper layer. Loosen with a fork rather than pulling by the stem.

Storing

Cure for two to four weeks hanging in a dry airy shaded place. Then trim roots and stems, or plait softneck types. Softneck garlic keeps eight to ten months at 10 to 15 C in a dry dark place. Hardneck keeps four to six months. Do not refrigerate, which makes it sprout.

Grow it next to

Good near carrots, beetroot, tomatoes, strawberries and roses. Keep well away from peas and beans.

Problems

[{'cause': 'Garlic rust, worse in damp crowded beds', 'fix': 'Space wider and weed, and remove the worst leaves. The bulb usually still forms but smaller. Rotate alliums on a three-year gap.', 'symptom': 'Orange dusty pustules on the leaves in late spring'}, {'cause': 'Not enough cold, planted too late, or a clove that was too small', 'fix': 'Plant in autumn so the crop gets several weeks below 10 C, and use only large outer cloves. The round is still edible, and replanting it usually gives a proper bulb next year.', 'symptom': 'One solid round bulb with no separate cloves'}, {'cause': 'Waterlogged heavy soil', 'fix': 'Plant on a 15 cm ridge or in raised beds, add grit to the row, or grow in containers on heavy clay.', 'symptom': 'Cloves rot over winter and never shoot'}, {'cause': 'Left in too long past maturity', 'fix': 'Lift earlier, when a third of the leaves are still green. Split bulbs do not store, so use them first.', 'symptom': 'Bulbs split apart in the ground with cloves bursting through the skin'}]

Saving your own seed

You replant cloves rather than saving true seed. Keep back the best two or three bulbs each year and replant their outer cloves in autumn. After four or five years buy in fresh certified stock to reset any virus build-up.

Containers

Fine in a pot at least 20 cm deep, five cloves to a 30 cm pot. Keep it outside all winter, because garlic needs the cold to split into cloves.