vegetable
Onion & garlic
Flavor, medicine, and storage. Garlic is planted in October — don’t miss it.
A braid of garlic and a bin of keepers get you through flu season and bland potatoes.
- When to sow
- Garlic cloves October 1–20, 2 in deep, mulch with leaves. Onion sets or plants April 1. Long-day varieties only (this is not Georgia).
- Spacing
- Garlic 6 in, rows 12 in. Onions 4 in.
- Days
- Garlic June–July. Onions July.
- Harvest
- Garlic when 4–5 lower leaves brown. Onions when tops flop. Pull, cure 2 weeks under cover with air.
- Store
- Cool, dry, dark, never plastic. Softneck garlic braids. Hardneck: cut tops, store bulbs. Copra and Patterson onions keep until March.
- Save seed
- Garlic is cloves of the best bulbs. Replant the biggest. Onions are biennial — plant a keeper and let it make a seed head.
- Companions
- Carrot, beet, brassicas. Not with peas or beans.
- Pests
- Onion maggot in wet springs — rotate, don’t plant in last year’s onion bed. Leave some flowering garlic for the bees.
- Buy seed garlic once, then never again if you cure it right.
- A ‘soft’ garlic in January was not cured long enough or was stored in a damp cellar.