Plant Garlic & Shallots Bulbs, Sow Leeks Seeds, Garden Cultivation

Garlic: Break into doves to plant

I can’t imagine spaghetti sauce without garlic, and I can’t imagine my garden without it either. There’s nothing better than fresh garlic from the garden—it’s a must for our pickles.

Buy a few garlic bulbs from a garden store or supermarket and break each one into individual cloves.

Plant each clove 3 or 4 inches from the next one in a wide row. Push them in to their full depth, pointed end up. Plant them as early as you can, like onion sets, and give them two or three side- dressings during the season. Keep the soil loose around them, and don’t let them get dry.

For big garlic bulbs, the plants need to grow mostly in cool weather. That’s why some folks plant garlic in the late summer or early fall and mulch the plants over the winter. The plants grow during the cool fall and spring weather before making their bulbs.

When the garlic tops fall over and die, pull up the bulbs, let them dry in the sun for a few days, and cure them in an airy place as you would onions. Store them in mesh bags or braid the tops.

Leeks:Blanch with soil for beautiful white stems

I start leeks indoors quite early along with my onions, and set them out in the garden as transplants. I grow a short wide row so I can have some good-sized leeks in early fall when the weather is getting cool and Jan and I start thinking about hot soups.

Instead of planting in a wide row, you can set them in the bottom of a narrow furrow 4 to 6 inches deep. Set the plants an inch deeper than they were in their flat. As the plants grow, gradually fill the furrow with soil.

In this way, 4 inches or so of stem beneath the soil will be white—and that’s what leeks are all about!

I keep a bed of leeks growing year after year with a bare minimum of effort. Years ago I gave them a good start in a short wide row. Now I let nature do the rest. I harvest leeks each spring and they continue to seed and multiply. The tastiest harvest is in the spring when the plants put on quick, new growth. That’s when I harvest many small, mild leeks rather than big ones later. Those can be tough. After the spring harvest I toss a few handfuls of compost around remaining plants. These go to seed in early summer and the bed soon starts adding plants.

Shallots: Plant one, get a cluster

If you haven’t cooked with shallots, you’re missing a mild, distinctive flavor that is great. Paying a high price for them at the store is ridiculous because anybody can grow enough bulbs to use all year and still have some to plant as next year’s crop.

Shallots are grown from sets which you may have to buy to get started. That should be your last purchase. Plant the sets, with the pointed end up, to their full depth. Space them 4 to 6 inches apart—they need more room than onion sets.

Side-dress them when they are 6 inches tall and again 3 weeks later.

Shallots are very productive. A pound of sets yields about 5 to 7 pounds of shallots. You’ll get a big cluster of shallots for each set you plant. Harvest these bulbs anytime.

I let most of the crop grow until the tops die back. I pull them up, dry them like onions, and stash them in the root cellar. They keep much better than onions—up to 10 or 12 months.

Be sure to save some to plant next year.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Plant Garlic & Shallots Bulbs, Sow Leeks Seeds, Garden Cultivation

• The Onion Family: My Garden is always full of Onions and their Relatives
• Store your Crops in the Proper Temperature Zone
• Bacteria Killer Vegetables: Chinese Chives
• A Few Final Weed-Beating Ideas
• How do you choose a suitable tree at a nursery?
• Green Garden, the Weed-Free Asparagus Bed
• With Garden Tiller Tool Planting a Green Manure Crop takes only minutes
• A Bushel of Home-grown Onion Sets from one Ounce of Seeds
• When to water a seed bed
• Saving Seeds