We love how easy garlic is to grow, and how deliciously rewarding the end result is! March, April, and May are the perfect months to plant cloves of most garlic varieties (including local Purple Striped Garlic) in Perth to yield mouth-watering full bulbs in Spring. It really is so rewarding to have each little clove you plant turn into a whole new, full bulb!

In this article, we share our steps and tips for growing garlic at home!

If you bought some of our organically grown WA garlicthat we had for sale this season, plant a few cloves and try growing your own garlic! Or just enjoy the amazing taste of WA-grown garlic. If you give growing garlic a go, make sure to tag our social media pages Urban Revolution Australia or @urbanrevaus so we can see your progress!

Home Grown Garlic by Dana 

What Do You Need To Grow Great Garlic?

Growing garlic at home is super easy - all you need is a big pot, root pouch, or garden bed full of nutritious soil and some good quality (preferably organic) garlic cloves that will grow into full bulbs.

Here are our tips for preparing good garlic-growing soil:

• Choose a sunny position.
• The most important thing with growing garlic is that you want loose, well-draining soil so the bulbs can easily form under the earth - they will have trouble if your soil is too packed-down. Our Square Foot Gardening Mix is a great soil to grow garlic in.
• Prepare your soil by adding organic matter such as green manure, compost, and well-rotted manure. Dig these in several weeks before planting. Our Nutrarich Mature Compost is a great ready-to-go soil input if you don't have time to make your own.

Organically Grown Garlic Bulbs Sold at Urban Revolution in Perth

How Do You Sow Garlic Cloves?

Planting garlic is so easy - no special tools required!

1. Separate the cloves you want to plant into individual segments, making sure that you don't accidentally have any sneaky pairs stuck together!
2. Choose the largest cloves for planting - big cloves means big heads.
3. Take each clove and, with the pointy end facing up, bury them around 4 cm deep and 10-15 cm apart in your prepared soil so each will have enough space to grow into a full bulb and not compete with other growing bulbs.
4. Water the cloves in well.
5. You can apply a light mulch to help retain moisture.

 Sowing Garlic Cloves

How Do You Care For Your Growing Garlic?

Garlic is a relatively low maintenance plant in your garden.  Following are some pointers to ensure a great garlic crop:

• Keep well watered when the weather is dry, especially if growing in pots
• Keep the area weed-free
• Lay an organic mulch or layer of grass clippings during the growing season to help retain moisture and feed the plants
• Hardneck garlic varieties grow flower stems called 'scapes' that should be removed to increase the size of your bulb (otherwise the plant will put its energy into producing a flower rather than the bulb). The removed scapes are edible and add a delicious soft garlic flavour to salads and stir-fries. 

Left: Softneck Garlic. Right: Hardneck Garlic and it's Scape

How Do You Harvest and Cure Garlic?

Harvesting

Softneck garlic varieties (like the Purple Stripe garlic we sell) are ready for harvest when the leaves have started to turn brown and/or the stems soften and fall over. This will happen some time in Spring. You don’t want to leave them until all the leaves die back as the bulbs will have started to split by this time.

If you're growing a hardneck garlic variety like Rojo de Castro, the stems will not soften or fall so just look out for browning leaves between September-November.