Garlic

Planting window

When to sow, by microclimate — foggier blocks run a different calendar than sunnier ones.

Sunlight

How well it does at each level of direct sun per day.

Soil depth

Root room it needs — useful for sizing raised beds and containers.

Soil pH

The soil acidity it grows best in — most crops sit just below neutral, so this mostly matters for heavily amended or long-reused beds.

Spacing

Room each plant needs — along the row and between rows — for sizing beds.

Growth habit

The shape it makes in the bed and how tall it gets — what tells you whether to give it a trellis, a stake, or just room.

Habit

Upright

Mature height

12–18 in

Stands on its own; the tallest types appreciate a stake in wind.

Growing in containers

Whether it does well in a pot, planter, or window box — the SF balcony-and-deck question, weighing its footprint, form, and staying power, not just root depth.

Happy in a pot, planter, or window box — no garden bed required.

How to start it

Sow it where it grows, or raise it under cover and set it out — and how far ahead to start the seedlings if it's the latter.

Usually

Direct-sow

Sown straight into the bed it will grow in.

Getting started

How it goes in the ground — how deep to sow or set it, and the soil temperature it needs to wake up. The cold-soil floor is the real limiter for direct-sowing in a foggy SF spring.

Started from

From cloves

Ideal soil temp

65–85°F

Set depth

2–3 in

Watering & feeding

How thirsty and how hungry it is — the water it wants and how much feeding the bed needs to keep it producing. In the fog belt even a thirsty crop drinks less than it would inland.

Water need

Moderate

Wants steady, even moisture — roughly an inch a week, a little more in a heat spell.

Feeding

Moderate feeder

A balanced feed worked into the bed at planting usually carries it through the season.

Water through spring bulbing for good size, then stop as the leaves yellow so the bulbs cure. A moderate feeder — lighter than bulb onions; a nitrogen boost as leaves grow in spring helps.

Pests & diseases

What tends to trouble this crop — what it is, what you'll see, and what to do about it, least-toxic first.

Harvest & storage

How to tell it's ready to pick, and how to keep it once it's in.

Keeps

MonthsA long keeper — stores for months.

Ready to harvest

Dig at the end of June when the lower leaves brown and die back; stop watering about a month before.

Storing

Cure the bulbs a few weeks in a warm, airy, shaded spot, then store in a cool, dark, well-ventilated pantry for months.

Culinary use & nutrition

What it's for in the kitchen, and the nutrients a 100 g raw serving is a notable source of.

Pollinators & wildlife

What this crop offers the garden's wildlife once it flowers — often the payoff for letting a bolting plant stand.

No notable draw for pollinators — its flowers offer them little.

Cultivated garlic has lost the ability to set fertile seed: the scape is usually cut for the kitchen, and the few flowers that do form abort into bulbils instead of opening, so there is next to nothing here for a pollinator.

Sources