Planting Garlic in the Spring

Ah... Spring is finally here, peeking demurely at us from around the edges of dense, half-melted snow. I've gotten a few calls already for garlic seed. There are always a few who want to plant it in the spring, and are disappointed to find that seed is hard to come by. I never keep any amount of seed quality garlic stocked for spring because it sells so well in the fall, it looses weight over the winter, and I'd be taking risk that it may spoil. I also don't like keeping seed for spring planting because the bulbs loose some vigor by being kept dormant, and I understand that garlic grows so much better when planted in the fall. I don't have very much experience with spring planted crops, and how the bulbs fare out for size, but what I've heard is usually not so promising.

  In Ontario, I always advise planting garlic in the fall ( late September - late October is best, for most regions ). The time spent underground through the winter is not wasted time. Garlic cloves go to work immediately once they are in the moist ground. This is the starting flag - the moment they have been waiting for! The conditions are right for rooting, and the clove skins start to pop as these vigorous little root nodules expand into new territory. Humidity is what tells garlic to start this part of dormancy period termination.
  Temperature is the factor that acts as a clarion call for upward growth. Sometimes, if the fall is right, and you planted "too soon" ( you never know until the fall is over, because in another year, that might have been the right calendar date anyway ) your garlic will experience some cold, and then a period of warm weather that will draw the green shoots out of the ground. This is not disastrous, so long as the plants don't waste too much energy getting really big above ground, just to flash-freeze later. Above-ground leaves die off over winter, but if the leaves are 3 - 4 inches or less, the root stock can recover from this loss fairly easily.

   Ideally, garlic planted in the fall will devote this time to root growth, and the cold will both trigger leaf growth, and hold it in check until spring. Garlic can freeze in the ground, and still come up in spring, so long as the freezing happens slowly enough and there is no water sitting, or ice over the ground, creating anaerobic (airless) soil conditions. Even at very cold ground temperatures, garlic will continue to extend roots into the soil. This way, when warm weather comes in April, the garlic has a head start, and emerges like a magic trick, growing fantastically fast for the first two weeks.
  Spring planted garlic doesn't have that advantage. What's more, if the seed garlic hasn't been treated to a vacation of cold temperature ( weird, I know, most of us like to go where it is warm for a vacation, but garlic is special); if the garlic seed has been stored consistently, just below room temperature, over the winter, it won't know what to do with itself when planted in the freshly tilled ground of April. Sure, it will grow, but to bulb properly garlic requires the right ingredients of cold temperature, and time. Rather than try to figure out the proper proportion, I like to delegate that to mother nature.

   I have occasionally planted garlic in the spring. I do this mainly with bulbils, which are a secondary seed source of great potential.  I try to give the seed at least a month to six weeks, at temperatures a bit above freezing. So far as I can figure,each variety may need a different amount of cold time, or chilling hours, but I haven't decided on the numbers yet, so I play on the safe side of excess. I've planted bulbils in the spring without doing this, and the results are only good for Chistmas garlic greens. You might harvest a little seed that way, but it is usually down to luck, because the bulb formation doesn't happen. Garlic needs seasons.  Look at it's close relative, allium cepa, the onion. Onions have a most particular need for the daylight patterns of the summer solstice to set the internal clock for bulb maturation time. Garlic is flexible, but not fooled. It needs temperature patterns in the same way.

  I've seen University students fail to recognize this. A few years ago, Guelph did a clean seed trials program with the Garlic Growers Association, using tissue culture regeneration to remove all viruses from a common strain of Music garlic.  It was great idea, and has been done successfully with potatoes for decades. Unfortunately, their use of a greenhouse to nurture the sterilized seedlings did not provide the right temperatures. The garlic seedling wouldn't die down when they were supposed to, and failed to produce viable seed.
  I was granted a packet of this seed because I'd given my name to grow it out as part of the continuing trials. Out of a few hundred dehydrated, leek-like tiny bulblets, five were properly formed, with storage capabilities and protective skins. Only much later, when I tried growing spring bulbils that were stored in our house until May planting, did I come to understand why the University had had this problem.
 This is part of seed saving. Part of understanding the exquisite way in which the species have evolved to survive in their native climate. Long ago, the weather patterns were more consistent ( I think ), and this was garlic's way of timing its growth to benefit from everything the seasons had to offer; staying dormant sometimes, and rapidly producing new seed at other times, but always remaining alive, and patient.
 Like the garlic, I've been fairly dormant this winter, waiting dispassionately for chance rays of inspiration. I like to think that time spent in this way is not wasted, but is spent rooting a little deeper into life, so that when the spring comes rushing in like a tide, we are ready once more to leaf out and seize the sun.