Gardening Information

Growing garlic is easy all you need is a four-inch pot (or a quart yogurt container with some drain holes poked in the bottom), a small bag of potting soil, and a saucer or tray to put the pot on to catch excess water.

Fill the pot with soil within ½ inch of the top, gently break the garlic bulbs into individual cloves (leave the peel on each one intact, but don’t worry if it splits a little), and push each individual piece, pointy end up, about an inch deep into the soil, planting perhaps 12 cloves close together. Place the pot on the saucer, water well, and put in a sunny spot. Water as needed to keep the soil evenly moist but not soggy.

In a week or two, the first green noses will start poking out of your garlic plants. Once the greens are 8 to 10 inches tall (a few more weeks), clip off what you need with scissors, and use in any recipe that calls for garlic or scallions. You will get several cuttings before the cloves stop putting up more sprouts. At that point you can empty the pot into the compost, refill with fresh potting soil, and plant it up with new cloves.

You won't get any new garlic cloves from your indoor garlic plants. To grow a new bulb, the leaves need to stay on the plant and collect sunshine for many months. But you will get a steady supply of greens, especially if you have multiple plants. Plant a second pot about the time you harvest the first cuttings from pot number one, and pot number two should be ready to harvest about the time the first pot is winding down.