Karma’s Seed Librarian introduces you to the pleasures of growing garlic!

Author: Jennifer Knoch, Karma’s Seed Librarian

This month, the seed we’re focusing on is a large one: garlic! Did you know if you plant one clove of garlic now, by mid-summer you’ll have a whole head? I love growing garlic because it’s low-maintenance, repels pests in the garden, makes delicious scapes, and It feels like magic when you dig it out. It’s also one of the first green things you’ll see in spring, when it’s starting to feel like winter will never end.

This month, the seed we’re focusing on is a large one: garlic! Did you know if you plant one clove of garlic now, by mid-summer you’ll have a whole head? I love growing garlic because it’s low-maintenance, repels pests in the garden, makes delicious scapes, and It feels like magic when you dig it out. It’s also one of the first green things you’ll see in spring, when it’s starting to feel like winter will never end.

1. Pick up some organic hard-neck garlic. (This is garlic that only has one row of cloves around a stem.) The bigger the cloves are the better.

2. Break apart the heads, but don’t remove the husk from the individual cloves.

3. Pick a growing area that’s sunny, with free-draining soil. (Garlic doesn’t like the wetness

of heavy clay.)

4. Plant the individual cloves, pointy side up, about two inches below the soil and at least

four inches apart.

5. Cover the soil in mulch such as straw or fall leaves.

6. Come spring, it’s a good idea to keep them mulched, weed and water as needed. But the plants themselves need no maintenance.

7. When the scapes shoot up and start to curl, harvest them and sauté or barbecue, or make my favourite, a garlic scape pesto.

8. The outer leaves will start to die back, and when about half the leaves have browned, dig up the bulbs. Tie them in bunches and hang them in a place with some air flow to cure for around a month, and you’ll have garlic that will store well for at least a couple of months. Don’t forget to set aside some of the biggest cloves for next year’s planting.

Jen Knoch is the keeper and originator of the Karma Seed Library, now in its second year. She makes sure it’s organized, and adds many of her own saved seeds (which you can identify by the atlas-page origami). You can find the library underneath the members’ table, near the Terracycle/Gillette recycling drop box. To use the library, take any seeds you need, and try to save seeds from that crop. (Watch the Chronicle for more tips on seed saving.) Then put the seeds in labelled packages with the variety and year harvested, so that others can grow them next year. 

You can follow Jennifer’s gardening adventures on Instagram at jkknoch, where you can see videos on her Seed Saving highlights about saving your bean seeds. And while you’re there, do remember to check out and subscribe to Karma Coop’s Instagram channel at karmacooptoronto