Soon! Soon! :)

I usually plant mine the same time as my tulip bulbs. They both come from Botanus.

I ordered the pack of 8 mixed garlic this year. Since I'll have more than I need I think I'll only plant the biggest ones.

It's odd... I grow a big crop of onions every year and I think I'm pretty good at it now, but garlic completely eludes me. I've tried fall planting, spring planting, leaving it in the ground for 2 years, but in the end my best choice is to just buy garlic at the grocery store.

Don, you can grow blackberries, onions, and melons, but not garlic? LOL !

I generally plant mine about 2 inches deeper than the package says, just like my tulips. I wonder if that would help ?

Gillian, definitely give it a try. The curliques in the garden look so cool.

Lynn

I'm planning to plant mine this weekend, cloves and bulbils. This will be my second time planting garlic; ordered my first bulbs last fall and planted them September 23. Three of the four varieties I planted grew and thrived. :)

Leningrad (Porcelain) did very well. Persian Star (Purple Stripe) did also. Surprisingly, Rose de Lautrec (Creole or weakly-bolting hardneck) grew nicely (though smaller) as well; it's not really ideal for our climate. Kilarney Red (Rocambole) didn't survive the winter. I'm adding Northern Quebec (Porcelain) and Kostyn's Red Russian (Marbled Purple Stripe) to the bunch this year.

Don, what varieties did you try? If you planted a softneck in the fall or a hardneck in the spring, that might explain the trouble.

Oh no, now there's different varieties! :S I was just going to buy some bulbs of organic Canadian grown garlic from Safeway and stuff the cloves in the garden.

I'm still going to do that. Will let you know how it goes. Thanks for the info all!

Most of the garlic sold in grocery stores are softneck garlics, which won't grow well here (and are planted in the spring if they do). Might be a waste of time and energy if you don't at least know whether it's a hardneck or not. They can grow softnecks in BC and other warmer places, but you'd be hard pressed in Manitoba, as far as I understand.

I think the stuff I bought before was hardneck. It had a purple skin, and a huge rock hard stem through the middle. It tasted different too.

I planted a dozen cloves about 10 days ago which was early but I was going away. I'll plant more now that I'm home but it's raining today. Trying to decide how many to plant, seems there's never too much.

I planted Ukranian red garlic and plant deeper than recommended - about 4" down (6" hole) and will mulch with shredded bark later. Also have some Italian (milder) to plant.

One year we were away in September and I planted in early October and had a great crop so there is still lots of time IMO.