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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-742
Garlic
Allium sativum
Garlic is a cool-season bulb crop grown from individual cloves rather than seed, with a long culinary history and an equally long medicinal one - traditional antiseptic and antimicrobial use now backed by research on slowing arteriosclerosis and improving glucose metabolism in diabetics. The bulb is the main yield, eaten raw or cooked, but the leaves, flowers and sprouted seed are edible too, milder than the bulb itself. What surprises most first-time growers is that it needs real winter cold to form a bulb at all - six to eight weeks below 40 F - and then waits for long summer days before it starts bulbing in earnest.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 4–9
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moist
Vertical layer
Rhizosphere- Soil pH
- 6–8
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 12–18 in
- Mature spread
- 9–12 in
- Plant spacing
- 6–8 in
- Root type
- Bulb
- Spread pattern
- None
Keep exploring
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Burdock Root
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Celeriac
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Daikon
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Earth Chestnut
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Elephant Garlic
Allium ampeloprasum var ampeloprasum
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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