Garlic is a brilliant spice to contribute to our indoor herb garden inventory. To start, growing garlic has little cost outside of our standard indoor herb growing set-up - which may include a little bit of growing lights if you don't have direct sun for much of the day. Apart from that, growing garlic is as simple as taking a garlic blub, removing the individual cloves and planting those. A note of caution however - grocery store garlic has a tendency to be sprayed with chemicals to limit the ability of the garlic to sprout, which is not what we need! It is generally recommended that you get bulbs from a consultant. If you can't find one, then I would like to suggest beginning with organic garlic.
There is one main thing to remember with garlic. This is a sub soil growing plant - even though it does have leaves above soil, the bulb grows beneath it. That implies the most important thing to keep in mind here is drainage. You do not want your garlic sitting in water, or it will simply rot. That is one of the explanations indoor growing is so well suited - it is easy to get a pot with glorious draining for the garlic to grow in.
Re the pot that you're going to use to grow your garlic, there are a few straightforward guidelines to bear in mind. You need your little garlic cloves to be spaced about 3-4 inches apart when you plant them. The diameter of your pot will determine how many you can plant - however you do desire your pot to be 10-12 inches deep. A handy place to start might be a 12" diameter pot that is 12" deep. You would then plant your cloves - pointy side up - about 1.5" under the surface, and 3-4 inches apart from each other.
Most recommend planting garlic in October/November - this is truly for those growing outside. You would like to plant before it starts to become too cold , but for roughly a month after planting, you need to keep the pots in a cool place - about 50 degrees F. Ensure you keep the cloves well watered during this time. At about that point its simply a matter of watering continually - again you don't want the cloves sitting in water and thus crumbling, but you don't want the soil getting too dry either.
Follow these steps then approx 10 months later you should have full bulbs prepared to crop. A quick note on harvesting: It could be a little challenging to work out when to crop them. If you harvest the garlic bulbs too early, then they're going to be small. There are two ways that you can figure this out - if you dig up a bulb and check the layers, if there are 3 layers on the outside then it is prepared, if there are rather more then it is not. On digging up bulbs - don't pull them out by the plant, instead utilise a shovel and completely dig them up. An alternate way to tell they are prepared is to wait for the leaves to start browning. If you planted in October/November, this will be around Aug/September the following year.
Joseph Robertson has always liked the convenience and freshness of having an indoor herb garden. On his site, you'll find handy articles on all that you need to understand about developing your own indoor herb garden.
