Garlic is a superb spice to contribute to our indoor herb garden repertoire. To start, growing garlic has little cost outside of our standard indoor herb growing setup – that may include a bit of growing lights if you are without direct sun for much of the day. Aside from that, growing garlic is as simple as taking a garlic blub, removing the individual cloves and planting those. A note of caution however – grocers garlic tends to be sprayed with chemicals to control the ability of the garlic to sprout, which is not what we need! It is generally recommended that you buy bulbs from a specialist. If you are unable to find one, then I would recommend beginning with organic garlic.
There’s one main thing to bear in mind with garlic. This is a sub soil growing plant – even though it does have leaves above soil, the bulb grows below it. That suggests the most significant thing to keep in mind here is drainage. You don’t want your garlic sitting in water, or it will simply rot. That’s one of the explanations indoor growing is so well suited – it is straightforward to buy a pot with fantastic draining for the garlic to grow in.
Re the pot that you are going to use to grow your garlic, there are a few easy axioms to keep in mind. You need your tiny garlic cloves to be spaced about 3-4 inches apart when you plant them. The diameter of your pot will decide how many you can plant – however you do desire your pot to be 10-12 inches deep. A neat place to start might be a 12″ diameter pot that’s 12″ deep. You would then plant your cloves – pointy side up – about 1.5″ below the surface, and 3-4 inches separate from one another.
Most endorse planting garlic in October/Nov – this is actually for those growing outside. You would like to plant before it gets too cold but for roughly a month after planting, you would like to keep the pots in a cool place – about fifty degrees F. Ensure you keep the cloves well watered in this time. At that point its simply a matter of watering constantly – again you don't want the cloves sitting in water and so crumbling, but you do not want the soil getting too dry either.
Follow these steps then approx 10 months later you ought to have full bulbs ready to harvest. A fast note on harvesting: It can be a little challenging to work out when to harvest them. If you crop the garlic bulbs too early, then they are going to be little. There are 2 ways that you can figure this out – if you dig up a bulb and check the layers, if there are three layers on the outside then it is prepared, if there are more then it isn't. On digging up bulbs – don’t pull them out by the plant, instead utilise a shovel and absolutely dig them up. An alternative way to tell they are ready is to wait for the leaves to start browning. If you planted in October/November, this will be around August/September the following year.
Joseph Robertson has always loved the convenience and freshness of having an indoor herb garden. On his internet site, you'll find handy articles on all you need to understand about developing your own indoor herb garden.
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This post was written by admin on August 2, 2011
