by Lisa Giroday, Sandra Lopuch and Sam Philips | It’s been all about the harvest in our recent articles, but now we shift the focus back to planting. The time has arrived to get that sweet, stinky ingredient that our culinary lives revolve around – garlic! – into the ground.

This week is the perfect time to get cracking on those cloves. While you technically have between now and November to plant, the weather report for this week is more than favourable, and planting on a sunny day is way more enjoyable (if this article comes out on a rainy day, we didn’t jinx it, we swear).

Garlic is an Allium, part of a family that includes onions, leeks, shallots and chives. It’s s a crop that overwinters in our mild (it’s true) climate, so we plant the clove now so it sets roots and lies dormant over the winter. Come spring, it continues its growth and sends up shoots. It’s a head start, so to speak.

Did you know that there are two kinds of garlic? Yup, hardneck and softneck. Hardneck varieties are hardier when it gets cold, and they produce tasty scapes (softneck varieties do not). This means your garlic crop has two harvests: the scapes, and the bulbs.

Three Useful Tips on Growing Garlic

Conditions: garlic prefers a sunny location and compost-enriched soil.

Where to get your seed: Tried, tested and true from Westcoast Seeds, or a healthy looking bulb from a farmers market (Klippers Organics at the VFM has some behemoth stinkers)

Planting: Good news — garlic can grow in containers – Just make sure you allow 4” of soil below the planted clove. Plant clove skin on, or off, 2” below soil surface.

Growing garlic is an awesome exercise in self-sufficiency (and multiplication). It’s a very rewarding crop to grow because once it’s harvested it’s cured and stored/hoarded for the long winter. If you start off growing a healthy cultivar and your crop is successful, you can split your crop and save your seed for the next planting. The more you save, the more you grow, the more you eat. It may take a few years of multiplying and expansion, but it’s worth it. At the Victory Gardens headquarters, the garlic grown in an 8’X10’ bed. It’s on its 4th year and can now sustain a year’s garlic needs for more than 2 people with extremely high garlic intake (roasted garlic on crackers, anyone?). An added bonus to growing garlic? Once harvested, you get to practice braiding your garlic stalks together – so satisfying!

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Victory Gardens is a team of local urban farmers for hire. Lisa, Sandra and Sam help transform tired or underused residential and commercial green spaces into food producing gardens. Their goal is to challenge the way communities use space and to participate in the change needed to consume food more sustainably. For the rest of the growing season, they’ve hooked up with Scout to share some cool tips and tricks on how to get the best from of our own backyards.