Not particularly. You might wish to check out the allium forum here on GW, lots of knowledgeable folks.

I've found spacing of the plants to be more important than others have noted. Way bigger cloves at 6 - 8" apart. I'd plant the cloves pretty soon in here, decent soil, and mulch heavily with anything, grass clippings, leaves, etc. Just discard, or eat, any small cloves, just plant the big ones.

Next June, snap off the stalks that come up with the scapes, as soon as you can.

Lots of fun, good eats.

This is my second year planting garlic. They don't like competition, so keep weeds down. They like healthy fertile soil, and lots of sun.

That said, last year I grew mine in partial shade and poor soil. I grew healthy, tasty bulbs, but they were smaller than I expected. This year, some are going into an adjacent bed with some compost added, and some are going into raised beds with bagged soil and compost.

I haven't noticed any bugs bothering the garlic plants, even when bugs were eating up plants right beside them.

Discard garlic?? I think not! Cook with it. Garlic is yummy. (I guess there is a reason why I live alone. :-) )

Note: Now's the time to plant garlic. Now through October. I've even planted in November and they worked out fine. I also planted a couple bulbs in spring, and I'm of the opinion that I should have just eaten them instead. I got single cloves out of the spring garlic. Wasn't even worth the labor of planting them.

I've been planting my Chesnok Red and Leningrad for at least 7 years now. I save only the largest bulbs for planting and plant only the largest cloves. It's an easy easy crop. I'll plant next week. BTW, I always give them some organic bulb foo when I plant and a shot of dried blood (nitrogen) in spring when growth begins.

What I learned about planting garlic. Garlic is ready when the tops yellow - July in my area - if you wait too long it disappears or something - I could only find half of the heads - the san marzanos overgrowing their supports and sprawling over the top of the garlic bed didn't help matters any. :-(

Don't forget to eat those scapes after you snap them off next summer. Yum!

My strongest piece of advice would be to make sure you mulch them. Heavily. Hay, straw, grass clippings, leaves all work fine. Most recommendations seem to center on mulching at planting time in the fall. While this is fine, I think it's more important to mulch in mid-spring. That's also a good time to fertilize, so I do both at the same time. Top dress with organic fertilizer and then add a thick layer of straw or other mulch to cover the fertilizer.

-Diggity

Diggity: do you cook the scapes? I dutifully snapped mine off and used them in a stir fry and wasn't impressed. Tough texture and not much flavor.
I had heard that they were great and the farmer's markets around here sell them like hot cakes. I don't get it.

Maybe you picked them when they were too mature? Pick them when they are less than 6 inches long. Be sure to pay attention because they grow very quickly! They do have a fairly mild garlic flavor but they shouldn't be tough....

-Diggity

I chopped up a scape this summer and put it into stir fry. It was mildly garlic flavored but not worth the hoopla, IMO. I, quite accidentally, let the other scapes I'd cut dry. They weren't much good after that, but the bulbils dried, too, and I was left with a ton of tiny cloves, which I'll do something with eventually.

I might have left the scapes go too long before I cut them.

I try to break off the scapes as soon as the lighter colored bulbette thing is out and I can reach under it.

I nibble them fresh, make a kind of pesto with what ever else is at hand, and one year we made pork sausage.

I've got three bulbs planted already: Persian Star, Polish Hardneck, and Killarney Red. I bought a lot of garlic this year, so I wanted to get a head start.

They are hungry plants. I trench, add a lot of compost and then side dress with fertilizer in spring. With good drainage and plenty of water it's impossible to over-feed.

I cut the scapes as soon as they curl around and up. They're still very tender then. I whirl them in the food processor with a tiny bit of olive oil and package them in 1/2 cup plastic containers, which freeze well. I sell this "instant garlic", which is very powerful, for $3.50 a container and can't provide enough of them.

BTW, you want to harvest your garlic when most of the plant is still green and only about 1/3 is yellow. Wait too long and the bulbs open up. Better to harvest too early than too late.

Here in Central New York, (Fingerlakes Region), the
'traditional' time to plant garlic is Columbus Day,
which is somewhere around the 11th of October.
But last year I didn't get to it until well into
November and had a pretty good crop this year.
I also found out if you don't harvest early enough,
the bulbs get a black, mildewy type of covering that
doesn't peel off with the skin and has to be cut off
the cloves....a big pain. Also, by accident, I left
a few heads in the ground over winter and in the
spring had a real thick patch of garlic that looked
almost like grass. I dug it up and found tons of
little tiny bulbs, about the size of marbles.
I fried up the fresh greens and used the marbles in
sauce and was amazed at the delicious mild garlic
flavor. I'm thinking of doing this on pupose this
year.

Thank you all for your posts and great advice. But do garlic really need ful sun? I had planned on setting them out where they'll get full sun while the trees are without leaves but get only part sun/dappled shade in summer. What's the worse that could happen? I got the sets already (at the farmers' market) and am ready to go.

Again, thanks for all your interesting posts.

The worse that could happen if they don't have full sun are small, stunted bulbs.

With box raised bed type gardening, it is best to grow along the edges of the box, where they will get more sun/light exposure.

Also, there is less chance for them being over-watered there also. Too much watering can make them rot.

Just my 2 c's.

Bejay

At the risk of sounding totally dumb - what's a scape? Is that the hard thing that grow up in the middle and the reason that I couldn't use some of my garlic and onions this years when it took over?
Stacey

1'M dumb also. What the heck is it?

Hardneck garlic plants grow a "flower" stalk, something like an iris stalk, whereas softneck garlic doesn't. The stalk, or scape, curls around to form a loop. On top of the stalk grow the bulbils, very tiny garlic cloves. A lot of people cut off the scapes because if the plant is sending energy into the scape, it's sending less energy into the bulb underground, and they don't grow as big.