10/20/2026
Garlic goes in the ground about now, and the calendar is the whole trick: 4 to 6 weeks before your soil freezes, which means October across most of the country, late September in zones 3 and 4, and November into December from zone 8 south 🧄
One clove becomes one head, and it's not a seed doing the work. Garlic doesn't reproduce by seed in the garden; each clove is a cutting, a clone of the plant it came from, with everything it needs to rebuild the whole head. That's why a single head from a good grower is enough to start a patch, and why the patch keeps its character year after year.
The condition is cold. A clove needs 6 to 8 weeks below about 40°F to get the signal that winter has passed. That's what tells it to split into cloves in spring. Skip the chill and you dig up a round, a single undivided bulb like a small onion. It's edible, and if you replant it next fall it will divide, but it's a wasted season. In the North the ground supplies the cold for free. From zone 8 south, gardeners fake it: seed garlic goes into the refrigerator, in a paper bag away from the fruit drawer, for 6 to 8 weeks before planting ❄️
Region also decides the type. Hardneck garlic, with the stiff central stem and the big easy-peeling cloves, wants real winters, zones 3 to 6, and throws up curly scapes in June as a bonus crop. Softneck garlic, the braidable kind that keeps until spring, suits zones 7 to 10 and the West Coast. Buy it as seed garlic from a farm or nursery rather than the grocery store, where the heads are often treated to keep them from sprouting.
Then the part on the chart:
Break the heads apart the day you plant, not before, and keep the papery skins on each clove
Plant the biggest outer cloves; small inner ones go to the kitchen. Big clove in, big head out
Pointed end up, 2 inches deep in the North and 1 inch in the South, 6 inches apart
In zones 6 and colder, 4 to 6 inches of straw mulch after planting, pulled back in spring
Harvest in June or July when the lower third of the leaves has browned, cure two weeks in a shady airy spot, and set the biggest heads aside for planting next fall 🌱
Buy the heads this week, and let the cold do the rest.
