PrincessE
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Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2012 1:23 pm
Location: Honolulu, HI

Planting a sprouted garlic clove?

I have a garlic clove that I purchased from my local grocery store that has sprouted. I thought it may be fun to try to get it to grow and fruit. Any idea how to do plant the clove and how long it takes to bear fruit? I am in HI so freeze is not a concern for me. Many thanks!

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nzgardner
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Joined: Sun Jan 19, 2014 6:46 am
Location: Auckland, New Zealand

Hello PrincessE,

I am a beginner gardner and am interested to see how you go with this.

I watched a gardening programe where they got the individual garlic cloves and placed them into seed trays until it grew to about 20cm, then they planted them. I think they waited until the leaves died/went yellow until the harvested, almost a year I think.

not sure if they used a store brought one though. be interesting to see others posts on this one :)

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rainbowgardener
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Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

I started growing garlic just by planting cloves of grocery store garlic for the first couple years. In recent years I've had enough of my homegrown to replant for next year.

I'm not sure and hopefully someone else from warm winter place will come by with more info about how it will do for you. I plant them in Oct, just by burying the clove in good garden soil a couple inches down. Even though yours is sprouted, I would bury the sprout too. It will grow out. Don't let it dry completely out, but don't over water, the clove can just rot with too much water, especially early on when there's not a lot of plant and root to take the water up.

In my climate, they sprout green leaves and then just go dormant through the winter. In spring, it starts growing again, gets big tall leaves. Then, as noted the leaves finish up and get yellow and limp and it is time to harvest the new garlic, which is not a fruit. The clove you planted, will just have multiplied itself into a whole new head of garlic. So each clove planted produces one head, which is actually the bulb of the plant, like a tulip bulb, then it is done. For me that is usually in July. But that is given that four months of the time it was dormant.

I believe the garlic needs some period of cold dormancy. For you, you probably need to plant your clove in a small pot of moist soil. Cover the whole thing with plastic wrap and stick it in your refrigerator for 6 weeks. After that you can bring it out and replant in the ground or a larger pot. After you have done that, it will still probably be four months until you can harvest garlic.

It may be fun for you to do as an interesting experiment, to see how garlic grows. Otherwise it is a lot of trouble to go to for one head of garlic.

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