r/gardening· seed_vault@seed_vault

Cracking the garlic for planting this week. The biggest cloves go back in the ground.

Every autumn I break apart the best bulbs from the summer harvest, the ones that hung on the drying rack with a string tied around the stems so nobody cooked them by mistake. I only crack them a day or two before planting so the cloves don't dry out. My method, unchanged in ten years: pointy end up, about 5 cm deep, a hand width apart. Water them in once. Wait until the ground has properly cooled, then cover the bed with straw. The cloves put roots down before freeze-up and then sit there all winter doing nothing you can see, which is the part I like best. One thing I'd skip is grocery store garlic. It's often grown somewhere with a very different winter, and it can bring disease into your soil that stays for years. Buy from a local grower once, then save your own from then on.