Steps To Grow Garlic In Your Home

By Sowmiya Prasad

With inflation reaching new highs; and vegetable prices skyrocketing, all we could think of is setting up of a kitchen garden. Beautiful kitchen gardens are possible if you put in a little effort. The main advantage of setting up a kitchen garden is that you can have fresh vegetables. Those are vegetables grown by you with all your care and it is going to taste good. Nothing comes fresh today and a kitchen garden is sure to ensure your health and money. Kitchen garden also helps you to save some money.

Setting up a kitchen garden requires a little effort. The modern day living situations may not have too much space to set up a huge garden. However, you can always plant a few herbs and necessary plants in your outdoor. A few plants in your balcony is certainly going to enhance the aesthetic value. A few simple steps are good enough to plan your kitchen garden.

Steps To Grow Garlic In Your Home

The first thing you need to do when it comes to planning a kitchen garden is to plan the space and choose the veggies. One best veggie you can grow in your kitchen garden is garlic. Growing garlic is going to help your cooking in a big way. So try planting it in your kitchen garden. Here are a few steps to grow garlic in your kitchen garden.

HEALTH BENEFITS: All You Need To Know About Garlic

1. When to plant garlic
When you are planning to plant garlic in kitchen garden, first you have to decide when to plant. Winter is however not a best time to plant garlic. It is better you plant garlic a few months earlier when the ground is pretty dry. Growing garlic in adverse conditions of weather may not turn fruitful.

2. Get it rooted
Plant garlic in kitchen garden before the ground freezes, so that it gets rooted. Green shoots will appear in the fall and it is a good sign. Growing garlic can be extremely easy and all you need is simple steps. Before growing garlic, you need to prepare the soil for it. A fertile soil is necessary to grow good garlic in kitchen garden.

3. Choose carefully
Before growing garlic, choose the kind of variety you need. There are hardneck and softneck varieties. The hardneck variety has a thick stalk and later a curling scalp on the top. More cloves are formed in the softneck varieties. Just plant only the biggest cloves while growing garlic. Bigger cloves will yield bigger garlic. While you plant bigger cloves while growing garlic, you can also use the smaller cloves in kitchen.

4. Plant it
While you plant garlic, plant it with the bulb pointing to the top. Smooth the soil surface once you plant all the cloves. This is one way to grow garlic in kitchen garden. If you plan to plant more than one variety of garlic , then demarcate it.

5. Give proper care
Planting is not the only thing. Growing garlic should be done with proper care and care should be in the form of fertilizers and water. Fertilize your garlic at least twice a day. You can use fish emulsion and kelp solution. Garlic is not a tuber that is too greedy for water but you should water it properly. Check if the soil is moisturized or dry. if the soil is dry an inch below the surface, then water it.

6. Harvest
Harvesting can be done when there are five or six green leaves. You can harvest it early in summer or winter. After the harvest is done, you need to cure it and for this hang the bulbs along with their foliage in large bundles.

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Story first published: Sunday, December 22, 2013, 15:59 [IST]
Read more about: gardening home