Garlic pulled from the garden doesn’t all have to head for the kitchen. One gardener in Southern Ontario selected the biggest cloves from this year’s harvest and put 109 of them back into a raised bed. The cloves will spend winter beneath the soil before producing another crop for cooking next year.
The cycle means part of one garlic harvest becomes the start of the next. In this garden, the remaining bulbs go into dishes such as garlic confit, soup, and compound butter.
She saved the biggest cloves from the harvest
Instead of buying all new planting garlic, she chose the largest cloves from garlic grown this year.
Those cloves become planting stock rather than dinner.
The gardener grows Music garlic, a hardneck variety she likes for its large cloves and flavor. She said this was the first year she had enough homegrown garlic to plant the next crop while keeping plenty for winter cooking.
Each clove went straight into the soil
The raised bed was prepared with compost, sheep manure, and chicken pellets before planting.
Rather than measuring 109 individual holes, she placed the cloves across the soil until the spacing looked right, then pushed each one down.
Cloves went into the ground with their papery skins intact. If the skin comes off a few during handling, she doesn’t consider it a problem.
Garlic gets planted before winter for a reason
Hardneck garlic can spend months in the ground before harvest.
Cold exposure plays a role in triggering bulb formation. In colder regions, garlic planted in fall can establish before winter, remain dormant through the cold period, resume growth in spring, and reach harvest in summer.
That makes garlic different from vegetables planted and harvested within one short growing season.
Put a clove into the soil in fall and the payoff doesn’t arrive until the following year.
Straw covered all 109 cloves
After the cloves were planted, the bed received water and a covering of straw. The gardener also added a makeshift cover to discourage her cat and other animals from disturbing the bed.
She uses straw across her vegetable beds and says it also helps retain moisture and reduce the amount of weeding she has to do during the growing season.
Next summer’s harvest comes back to the kitchen
Growing garlic this way creates a cycle.
The gardener keeps the largest bulbs for the following year’s planting, estimating that around 20 bulbs from the harvest will go back into producing another crop. Everything else is food.
Her kitchen uses the garlic for confit, soup, compound butter, and other dishes. Hardneck garlic brings another edible bonus before the bulbs are ready: scapes. She cooks those too, including on the grill with oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.
So those 109 cloves aren’t disappearing into a garden bed without a purpose. They’re next year’s garlic supply getting started months before the first bulb reaches the kitchen.
Image credits go to u/Canuckistanian71
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