Since garlic does not have a proper flower, it can't cross with anything! And you don't plant a seed but usually single cloves from the bulb. Mix or match throughout the bed and it doesn't matter. You'll always get back the same thing as what was planted.

Martin

Just to add to Martin's response, what you are doing when you grow garlic (and also potatoes, btw) is cloning them. So there is no opportunity for genetic mixing.

This is true, btw, of any sort of vegetative propagation. If you take cuttings of something, f'rinstance, and root them, you get an exact replication of the parent plant.

That makes it so easy! Yeah! Thanks so much for answering. I ordered an assortment and ended up with 11 dif kinds...and got kinda worried...thought I'd have to eat some and plant some. It might happen anyway.=) But thanks again.

Plant all 11 varities and keep track of which is which. When you harvest, you can determinw which ones you wand to continue and which, if any, you want to drop.

It is helpful to keep them somewhat seperated. Different varieties have different harvest times and as harvest nears some garlic will still need to be watered and others need to be harvested. We grow 15 varieties abd the earliest is a month earlier than the latest

GarlicLady, how far apart do you suggest? I am planning on making a bed and planting by variety. What is an adequate distance between each variety? Thanks, all for answering.

Dannic  I am planting most of my varieties spaced 6" with rows 6" apart. I then skip a row between varieties; hence a 12" gap. This is not as much as Garlic Lady is suggesting (I am assuming she has 30" - 36" in mind given her concerns over watering those who still have time to grow even as others are nearing harvest).

I try and address this by grouping my varieties roughly by harvest date, creating a spectrum down the bed. I don't know all my target harvest dates, so there is a fair amount of guesswork, at least for new varieties. But I also water by hand, and have decent control over how much water my individual sections get. I see it as a matter of scale, and GL is in a different league.