Planting garlic

October is generally the time to plant garlic. I still haven’t planted mine yet. Does anyone have experience in planting garlic later than normal? I’ve been planting it for quite a few years but just very late in getting it done this year.

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I did some in January lasy year and it came out fine just a little small. Glad you brought this up, I’m going to plant some this week!

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Ive GOT to get mine planted too. Ugh.

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Like most gardening rules of thumb, the dates to plant garlic are based on the weather which doesn’t always correlate to the calendar. If the ground is still workable (not frozen) it’s just fine to plant garlic (and other bulbs) later than the recommended calendar date. (Or to plant earlier, since garlic seeds are self planting starting late in September typically).

Same is true for most flowering bulbs as well. Some mail order bulb suppliers don’t send bulbs out any earlier than October 15 into our climate zone.

And, almost completely unrelated, pruning of flowering shrubs and trees have recommended calendar dates, but the actual local weather is the determining factor and sticking strictly to the calendar can cause less than optimal results.

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Thanks @Jesse, that’s good to know. I’ve been planting it for quite a few years but I’ve never gotten it in this late.
@Paula seems this time of year is way too busy. It’s easy to put some of these things off.
@mikeb thank you for the information. I agree, these are only rules of thumb. I only have hardneck garlic and of course, if you don’t remove the scapes, they’ll form all those little seed bulbils and plant themselves earlier than the October recommendation. I used to never plant it at all. I’d just let it seed itself wherever it fell. I ended up with garlic coming up all over the garden. It can turn really weedy if you aren’t careful. LOL Four or five years ago I built a dedicated raised bed just for garlic. It’s 4’ x 8’ and I’ve been pulling up any garlic anywhere else in the garden. But the last couple of years I’ve also been pulling off all the scapes as they form so I don’t end up with all the little self-planted bulbils.
A good rule of thumb for flowering shrubs and trees is to prune right after they finish flowering so you don’t cut off next year’s flower buds that start to form. I’m not sure if this is correct for all shrubs and trees, but if you don’t know for sure, this is a good way to do it. Of course, that won’t work with fruiting trees and shrubs since you need to wait till after harvest.

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WooHoo! I finally got my garlic planted yesterday, 11/3, and today it’s raining. I was hoping for that so the garlic could get a good watering even though I did water it after I planted it. :smile: I planted just over 100 cloves, much less than I normally plant, but part of what I’ve harvested in the past few years hasn’t gotten used so I decided to cut back on the amount I planted.

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