I've been watching your vids for a couple years of the growth, production and harvests of your garden. After watching you tend your frozen ground in spring, your mulching, doming, etc, I have come to the conclusion that a huge percentage of the success of a garden comes from prepping the soil. Considering your growing zone and short season, your garden is amazing due to your knowledge and hard work. Thanks for sharing your love for gardening!

In the Philipines they peel the dead leaves down to the bottom of the stem to help the garlic grow even bigger, the theory being that the stem can grow thicker without dealing with the resistance of dying leaves still wrapped around it holding it tight.

I had very big garlic this year and last fall I added fresh compost to my bed , planted a little deeper than normal, maybe 5 or 6 inches, and 6 inches apart and covered with 6 inches of hay or straw and never touched it until harvest. When I harvested I noticed a couple of garlics that were planted right beside each other and they were just as big as the others. So this year I'm going to do everything the same except plant them 3 inches apart and go from 2 beds of garlic to 1 bed and gain a bed for other crops. I think garlics are heavy esters and need rich soil. I'm growing beans in my garlic beds right now which will add nitrogen to the soil and I'm going to try and plant garlic in the same bed this year as an experiment. I agree, garlic is the easiest thing to grow.

Last year, my first year, growing garlic, onion, and potatoes was a great fail. Truly, it helps so much, it truly does, to research a little bit before planting something for your first time. And also, I can't tell you how helpful it has been to me, taking your advice by making my own garden roadmap as I sowed my seeds inside raised beds. As sprouts appeared, I looked at my itemized drawing and knew exactly what I planted. Plus, it's helpful to know what different plant leaves look like to save from accidentally pulling out a "volunteer" - a future fruit/vegetable. Thanks again.

Thank you for sharing. Yes my garlic is not as big as I had hoped. I purchased both music and Russian from Vesey’s. This is the first year of doing a no till approach and I have about 3-6” of leaf mulch on all of the beds I use so I would say it is likely not optimum soil conditions just yet. The garlic I have is not quite ready for harvest yet but I thought I would pull a few random ones as a test to see where I am at. 🇨🇦😎

Garlic is a "heavy" feeder...this info is the clue that always gives me large beautiful flavorful garlic.

Just harvested my spring garlic. Planted end of May. Amended my soil with seaweed and bone meal. Was pleasantly shocked at the number of big bulbs ( keeping those for seed). Going to try fall garlic planting next month. Tried the year before but they went mushy in over wintering despite being in a raised bed. Good video

Hey Greg Awesome video! I was very fortunate with my garlic harvest this year, lots of really big heads (the Music Garlic) my Rocambole not so much but still a good respectable eating size! So following your info on an older video about garlic size I set aside all the garlic I need to replant this year plus I may still buy a small amount of garlic from Vessey's of another variety. The soil makes a huge difference in bulb size, plus the amount of mulch for water retention for sure. With the heat waves we get here I do have to deep water occasionally but the garlic bed pretty much got ignored....I think I may have doused it once this year. I put 6" of old hay/horse manure last fall over the cloves and then this spring when the plants where about 8" high I re-mulched with about 4" of grass clippings. So we finally got to the point of enough garlic to eat and re-plant to get us through to next summer. This years harvest was about 3 weeks earlier than last year's harvest and put that down to the super mild winter we had and warmer spring, the garlic never seemed to stop growing. By Christmas the garlic was up 4 - 5" high...I also closed the gap on my garlic - I am about 4" apart and the rows are about 6" apart...did not affect size at all...my seed garlics are easily 3"+ across! But as usual your video was full of good advice and information - Thank you for doing them I really enjoy them. Stay safe! Mike

Just getting ready to give growing garlic yet another chance 3rd try. I grew it last year and the flavor and juiciness was great but the size disappointing. Well it was better than the previous year but no where near what I was hoping for. Thanks for sharing your experiences with all of us. This year I’m going to try different spots and I’ll add some good compost and manure before planting. One of your viewers recommends comfrey tea throughout growing. Guess I’ll try to find what that’s called here in Portugal and try to get me some. Really enjoy seeing your videos. It’s so nice that your actually reply to the comments. Fingers crossed that this year’s planting will yield big results!

Great video with good advice. We have full sun which most of our friends don't, so we're keeping quiet about this year's bumper crop of garlic. Here's a question for you: My wife wants to only plant cloves from bulbs with 6 cloves, since that's the ideal count for the Korean Red that we grow. Does it really matter? We have some large bulbs with fat cloves @ 7 or 8 per bulb. I would like to use them for planting. BTW, 'large' for this variety is a bulb 2 to 2 1/2 inches in diameter. At least that's what we've got. I'm happy with it...

Great advice, look after the soil and the plants take care of themselves 👌🍀

Pulled my first garlic this morning, wonderful tops small bulb, I expected so much more.

We planted garlic on a raised ridge at the edge of our sand bowl garden. Planted in the ridge because the bowl holds water and we were afraid of it rotting. Anyhow it's only half sun due to the shade of a very big pine. Summer came and we got seriously busy with farm work and the rains stopped. The garlic disappeared. Well we found it recently. Little crowded clumps. I wonder can it be dug up, split up and replanted and not cause death to the garlic?

Great video. Thank you

Hello and good day. I am spring planting garlic. D so one day to vernalize the garlic which is use ing a fridge. Then there is stratified which I think is using the freezer. For the same amount of time. I have garlic in the fridge now and it’s growing roots very nicely. Should I freeze it as well. Have you tried this out.

My experience with getting small garlic is compacted soil and bed overran with weeds. On the other hand, lose soil produced nice garlic even with some weeds around.

Damn dude that is some seriously big garlic

Thanks Greg, for all the help and inspiration that we new gardeners thrive on. I'm in Western Canada where we've had a extremely sodden spring and summer. Should I continue with a mulching cover this year?

I grew Music this year and German Purple. The german purple was twice the size as music.

When the garlic is planted, do/can you cover it with straw for the winter? I live in Kingston NS

I planted really nice organic cloves in fall but my garlic are really small. We’ve had drought this year and I almost never water that no-till bed. I’ve harvested the scapes as you’ve suggested in another video (thank you!) and now leaves have turned half brown like you’ve shown. Is there any hope that if I leave them in the ground until August, they’ll continue growing?

Interesting point you made that coincides with my poor garlic performance this year. Last year I grew potatoes in the 4'x30' bed that I grew 600 garlic in this year and this is the first time in the 4 years that I've been growing garlic that I have been disappointed in my crop. I have harvested about half of it so far but the results are nothing to write home about. I wonder if potatoes is a bad crop to precede garlic. (Note: I just did an online search and could not find any info about a correlation between potatoes and bad garlic crops.) I think the soil was simply depleted by the potatoes and was not sufficiently amended after (I only mulched it) before planting garlic. I am planning on bringing in a lot of horse manure to several of my 15 garden beds this fall. We also had an abnormally cool stretch of weather for about a month in the spring. We had a drought this summer but that usually isn't a factor for me with garlic size because I mulch so heavily. I've produced great crops of garlic during two previous droughts because of my mulching and I never watered them.

Thanks! This is great info!

Store bought garlic is often treated with growth and sprout inhibitors, chemical bleaching, and sometimes passed through a gamma radiation beam to extend the storage times. Family used to grow a garden each year during the early 90s and could use store bought garlic to plant. Tried to grow grocery store bought garlic only to have extremely poor stunted growth no taller than 6 -8 inches after an entire summer. I have since learned more about why it didn't work out. FYI the same thing happened when trying organic garlic from different national brand grocery stores. You might be able to find some that weren't treated but IMO wasted time and money is not worth the effort. Better to secure from a source that is good right from the start.

I had one garlic bed this year with three potatoes at one side. The potatoes became really big, the garlic rather small although I used not so small garlic cloves from last year. This really bothers me. Maybe it's the variety. Thanks for the video.

Small garlic could also be due to pink root. In hindsight I had a little last year and this year the garlic is barely living. Grass/weeds invading the beds can also reduce yield.

Amazing video. But i lost you at one point. Do you need to water alot or little? Thanks.

I live in the tropics

I want to start garlic in pots or grow bags any suggestions on soil?

ours was awful this year...do you ever use organic granular fertilizers in your garden beds?

well I can tell you my Grocery garlic was crap ! some rotted some died early, seed Garlic 100% the best

I added to my soil, mulched and me garlic stunk this year! Just small cloves and what I planted wasnt small... back to the drawing board! :(

You d I don't tell the people the stages of putting straw during winter and fertizing every 6 weeks.

We liked the NO TOIl heehee

nope my garlic attempt it looked like green onion lol. i think i crowded them too much

Very helpful. Thank you

What spacing do you use when planting?

Here is where you may have gone wrong.... Never plant a root vegetable like garlic in a previously planted root vegetable bed. You planted Potatoes the previous year as a root vegetable which introduces grubs, soil borne disease that the potato most likely introduced and planting another root vegetable will now inherit the problems. If you plant another type of crop say of the bean family, or leaf family then you wouldn't have problems. You can't plant another root vegetable in the same spot you planted a previous years root vegetable 2 years in a row... even though they aren't the same root vegetable, they are still a root vegetable. You need to rotate your crop type every year and can plant again on the 2nd or even better the 3rd year for the same root vegetable. Also, keep in mind not all garlic will grow big... each variety has its own size and some grow naturally smaller. So, if you want big garlic, plant bigger varieties as well. Of course, you will have years where some varieties that should grow big, have some smaller garlic heads, it happens... Once the freeze has subsided, I take off the mulch, because mulch also introduces soil borne diseases... I place the overwintered mulch back into the compost and turn it in. If you are worried about weeds growing when you take the mulch off, just lightly rake now and again between your beds and that will keep the weeds at bay. Hope this helps... By the way... beautiful garden you have.

Great tips thanks

Just as seed potatoes are clones of the parent, are the garlic bulbs basically the same? In a potato video you did ,that was the logic for using small seed potatoes. As an experiment, would you consider doing the same thing, but use smaller garlic planted in prime real estate to see if soil/site selection was potentially a positive mitigating factor as it applies to garlic? Great video as always.

Okay when he said let’s take a look around but moved 6 inches to his left but our right from facing him and was out of breathe. Idk if it’s just something he has but I did laugh mainly at him moving 6 inches after saying let’s take a look around

One more thing is you said you didn't water your garlic at all... all season. Garlic needs water to grow well and big.... Unless you get a lot of rain in their growing season... Garlic need an inch of water a week during their growing season. So if it doesn't rain much there during their spring and early summer to harvest make sure to water for those who have little rain in their areas which we have to here on the mildest part of Canada which is the Southern most tip of Vancouver Island. I don't water the last week and a half to 2 weeks as well.

How do you know when to pull them up?

Our garlic got ravaged by Leek moths this year. We will have to cover them for a few years to insure that the populations gets low enough that it won't be a problem in the future.

Subtittles in spanish please 🙏

What is the name of your garlic?

There is a lot of garlic on the market from China.

If you were a person

Are you okay? You seem sick.