GARLIC By Michael Shepard, Penn State Extension Master Gardener of Columbia County
There is nothing like sautéed garlic. The aroma triggers a primal part of the olfactory senses and signals “comfort food.” This may be why cultures around the world have eaten it for the past few thousand years. If you need another reason to eat it, many recent nutritional studies suggest it offers numerous health benefits. Garlic is a member of the genus Allium and is related to onions, leeks, and shallots. All these vegetables contain varying amounts of sulfur compounds, which give them their distinctive pungency and are thought to be the reason for many health benefits. California is the major producer of garlic in the United States, but a significant fraction is imported from Asia, which has recently become a hot-button political issue. Fortunately, garlic is extremely easy to grow, and a small corner of your garden can produce all you or your family will likely use for most of the year! Garlic comes in many varieties, but all fall into two broad types - hardneck and softneck. Both types can be grown in Pennsylvania. You may come across “elephant” garlic, but it’s more closely related to the leek and is milder than true garlic. Hardneck garlic does better in colder zones, has bigger heads and cloves, and tends to have a stronger garlic flavor. Softneck garlic does better in warmer climes, has smaller heads but more cloves, and stores better - up to a year in ideal conditions. From the outside, it is difficult to tell hardneck from softneck, but when you break open the head, the hardneck will have a hard central stalk (or neck) sur- rounded by the cloves. Softneck lacks a central stalk. The hardneck stalk will send up a slender shoot called a “scape” in late spring or early summer. If left alone, it will
eventually produce seeds, but since this scape robs the plant of nutrients and energy, it should be cut off to maximize head growth. Don’t toss them! You can eat these delicious scapes raw or cooked - they have an onion-chive-garlic flavor. To grow garlic, start with the best heads. Grocery store garlic is fine for eating, but not ideal for growing. It is often treated to inhibit sprouting, and you usually don’t know its origin. You can buy your seed heads from many garden catalogs, nurs- eries, or even local growers at a farmers’ market. Garlic likes full sun and well-drained, rich soil with a pH between 6 and 7. To plant,
Garlic is not prone to many diseases, but it can fall prey to white rot fungus and some insects, including onion maggots and onion thrips. Good gardening prac- tices can minimize problems with these. However, a new threat, the accidentally introduced allium leafminer fly, is more problematic. Because it has no native predators or controls, it’s considered invasive. To minimize the problem, the best strategy is to plant late in the autumn, after the insect has finished its final repro - ductive phase of the year. I plant my garlic between Halloween and mid-November. This reduces the risk of the allium leafminer while giving the roots enough time to become established, but not enough to send up a shoot. In winter, garlic goes dormant, a neces- sary phase to spur growth. After the soil warms in spring, the plants awaken, send up shoots, and begin to mature. Harvest when about half of the leaves have turned yellow or brown and died back, usually in midsummer. Use a gar- den fork to pry them out (like potatoes) carefully, and unless you are going to eat them right away, leave them out for a week or so to cure before storing them. Pick several of the largest heads to set aside for next year’s seed and enjoy! Mike Shepard is a Penn State Extension Master
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carefully split the head into cloves, keeping the papery skin on.
Plant the largest cloves - they will grow the largest heads - and save the smaller cloves for eating.
put them stem-up (the hard, pointy nub is the stem) about 2 inches deep. You can plant them fairly close together; I have mine in a grid pattern about 6 inches apart.
Gardener in Columbia County. He’s a space scientist and professor at Bloomsburg (now Commonwealth) University and an enthusiastic vegetable grower.
water and put a few inches of mulch on top.
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October–December • 2026
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