This ONE Tip Will DOUBLE The Size of Your Garlic Heads!

I've been growing garlic for about 5 years now, and the advice we give in Europe is that you don't feed them ANYTHING. THey don't need anything, just like onions and shallots. But for some reason many American gardening channels claim that they're nitrogen heavy and need a lot of fertilizer, it couldn't be further from the truth. These few things will increase your yield more than any fertilizer : 1) Don't plant them that deep. The tip of the clove should poke out in the air. It helps with big bulbs, as it grows outwards easier, especially in my clay soil. 2) Instead of fertilizer, you just need humus. And for that, you only need mulch. I put 15-20 cm of wood chips on my garlics when I plant them. And that's all I do. In March, there's usually a weeding chore I Have to do coz some weeds have come through usually, and in May there's usually a lack of rain in France with global warming, so they need one good soaking in May. That's it. Also, for garlic, it's useless to have ginormous heads. You want big heads ? Grow elephant garlic. But bigger heads means less flavor. Because for giant heads with normal garlic you need nitrogen, which makes the cells expand, soak up water, and dilute the taste. Of course, the heads you harvested from small cloves were too small, but the other ones are fine, and I usually get mostly this caliber. Again, just with woodchips, nothing else.

Nice video, and a great tip. But there is something to watch out for when doing this that I learned the hard way after planting only the largest cloves for 15 years or more. By only using the largest cloves for seed, you are inadvertently selecting for heads with fewer cloves. If you have two bulbs the same size, the one with fewer cloves will have larger cloves, which you will choose for seed. After 10-15 years of doing this most of my garlic only had three massive cloves per plant. The problem with that is that to keep the same number of plants each year, you have to use 1/3 of your harvest for next year's seed! Since I figured this out, I've been planting the largest cloves from the bulbs that contained the largest number of cloves. My stock now gives me bulbs with 4-6 large cloves, so I only have to use 1/5 of my harvest for seed.

What we've done here in Spain for literally centuries is just tie off the plant to stop sending nutrients to the top green part and fatten up the garlic head in the ground, and it works very well. Also works with onions.

I've saved the flower seeds once and wife said to trow them on the compost. Well, I've plant them instead and harvested the biggest and healthiest crop ever. :-)

I love that you were amazed by the size of the garlics, when I was actually amazed by the quality of your soil. 👏🏼

That is why I plant small cloves half-way between properly-spaced large cloves. In the spring I have an early harvest of the small ones to use as scallions or spring onions. That restores the space for larger bulbs but makes more efficient use of my beds.

Your giggling enthusiasm is totally infectious, i love that you love what you are doing

Great to see this much of a difference! The first time (2 years ago) I did garlic, I just used whatever my husband was ignoring when he selected one for cooking. So I ended up with all the teeny tiny ones. This year (or last year, I mean), I stole all the chunkiest ones so I can have a bigger harvest (and then also planted the ones he'd been ignoring in a tub indoors so I can harvest as green garlic earlier). I'll be interested to see the difference – I definitely think my garlic harvest last year was smaller than it could have been thanks to the cloves I used. Can't wait to see the results!

Try planting some small cloves close together about 2” apart in a 9” pot. Keep moist don’t feed and let them grow through the winter into summer. Let them die back and leave in the pot till autumn. Remove from pot when your planting your garlic. They won’t have divided and will be spherical fat cloves. Plant as you would any garlic clove and harvest really big bulbs next year. It’s a phaff the first year but pays dividends if done well.

I love how you giggle during harvesting! That's the reason why I want to do gardening too. I want to feel the same way.

Thank you for doing this, I wanted to do this growing season myself. Saved me mate👍

I l admire how gleeful you were harvesting your garlic! i was inspired to plant some in start pots after I notice a head starting to grow in my kitchen.

Incredible man! Great energy Thank-you for weighing out the yield.

Love the seriously geeky research gardener approach. ❤

I love your enthusiasm,it made me smile 😊 I’m about to grow garlic for the first time. Thank you, I love it.

I had found the same thing. I don't give them great soil. But they still can grow quite large. One thing I found was that the time of planting was critical to getting large garlic. Too early and they go to flower before winter. Too late and they have no size before the cold weather comes. I am in the southern hemisphere but have found that if I plant about the second week of March the plants put on plenty of leaf and can take full advantage of the weaker winter sun and continue to grow during the cooler months. Giving a much bigger yield than plants that are put in during April which don't get enough leaf early enough.

I couldn't find good seed garlic from the local co-op, so I just used store bought, softneck Chinese garlic (smaller bulbs). I added homemade compost, horse manure, leaf mold and mulched with pine needles. The necks are thick as broom handles right now, and I won't harvest for another month or so from now. Can't wait to see the bulb sizes this year

Great video. Every time you uproot a big garlic, I'm grinning from ear to ear. Thanks.

Got the giggles from your reaction 👍🏽 Congrats on those beautiful garlic!!

I did a very similar experiment, selecting the smallest cloves I could find and replanting the cloves that resulted. After two years they were back up to average size. The garlic variety was Mikulov, an overwintering type.