Free In Pursuit of Garlic by Liz Primeau

they’re living things with an energy flow and they like being included in the conversation.
    IF YOU live a distance north or south of the forty-ninth parallel or the Great Lakes, the rules change. Plant a little deeper the farther north you live, a little shallower if you’re in a more southern climate. In severely cold climates, cover the cloves with as much as 4 inches (10 centimeters) of soil (plus a winter blanket of mulch); in California an inch (2 centimeters) should suffice. But don’t lose too much sleep over planting depths—if you plant too deep the shoots may take longer to pop through the earth in spring, but they’ll catch up once the weather is warm.
    Many garlic growers say the most successful seed cloves don’t come from the biggest bulbs; in fact large seed cloves don’t ensure a crop of big bulbs the following year. But really small cloves aren’t ideal either; they may not grow bulbs that are properly segmented. Use only the larger outer cloves of softneck varieties for seed. “Eat the biggest and the smallest,” says Ted Maczka. “Plant the middle-sized ones.”
Watering
    Garlic that doesn’t get enough to drink suffers stress and may start to produce bulbs early, resulting in smaller cloves and bulbs. The bulbs may shatter at harvest, too, meaning the skins split and leave the cloves underneath vulnerable to bacteria and rotting. Split skin is okay if you have a small crop and expect to eat it within a few weeks, but the bulbs won’t store successfully; nor, as mentioned, should you use them as seed stock.
    Watering requires a commonsense approach. Plants need enough for healthy growth, but they shouldn’t be sitting in puddles. An inch or two (2.5 to 5 centimeters) of water a week is ideal, applied with a soaker hose or sprinkler in the morning if there hasn’t been enough rain. Give the plants a deep watering rather than a surface sprinkling. Garlic may be shallow rooted, but the soil must be damp enough deeply enough to prevent it from drying out quickly. Sandy soil needs to be watched because it dries out fast in hot, sunny weather.
    Make sure the soil is damp when you plant the cloves so that the roots can begin to grow immediately—languishing in dry soil makes them prone to disease or deterioration. When harvest time approaches, garlic needs less water so that growth will slow and the bulbs can mature. I never pray for rain after the middle of July, and in a heavy downpour I’m tempted to rush into the garden and hold an umbrella over the garlic patch to protect the plants from soggy soil that might encourage rot. There’s not much you can do about an unwelcome rainfall, but you can withhold extra irrigation via the sprinkler.
Using Fertilizer
    Loamy soil high in organic matter, which holds moisture but doesn’t get waterlogged, is more important than a truckload of fertilizer. If any fertilizer is needed, it will be nitrogen, as my oracle Judith advised. Plants lacking nitrogen look poorly—during the growing season, they show weakened vigor and a general yellowing, and they produce small bulbs earlier than normal. Judith follows the general rule and mixes blood meal with the soil when she’s planting the cloves, then applies it as a side dressing a couple of times during the season.
    Nitrogen encourages foliage growth and can slow bulb formation near harvest time, so hold off on fertilizer altogether as harvest approaches.
    Because it’s a root crop, garlic may also benefit from a little potassium. Wood ashes are a good organic form.
Dealing with Pests and Diseases
    There’s something to be said for being smelly and strong tasting—it chases away diseases and pests. For millennia garlic’s sulfurous compounds have defended it against plant-eating pests and have poisoned strains of fungi and bacteria that dared invade its skin. But garlic isn’t immune to everything, and the list of its biological enemies below may suggest that garlic isn’t all that tough. Still, most