Orlando Garlic Company

The cool-month crop

UF/IFAS Gardening Solutions gives Florida garlic one planting window: late fall through early winter. Garlic does not produce seed. You break a bulb into cloves and plant those, pointed end up, in full sun and well-drained soil with organic matter in it. Water and feed on a regular basis. This crop sits in the ground for months.

Look for soft-necked types such as Artichoke or Creole, which UF/IFAS names as well suited to Florida gardens. Hardneck garlic is bred for cold winters and a long chill. That is not what a Central Florida winter provides. A grocery bulb is often a variety grown for California, and it may have been treated to discourage sprouting. Mechanically you can plant a grocery clove. It is a weak bet for this heat.

Florida is not a garlic state

Say that plainly, because it changes how much weight to put on any date you read online. Garlic is not in the planting table of the Florida Vegetable Gardening Guide, and it is not in the UF/IFAS What to Plant by Month lists either. Onions, leeks, and shallots are. Garlic is not. The Gardening Solutions garlic page is the UF/IFAS source that gives a window, and it gives a season, not a week. Treat late fall to early winter as the guidance. Treat any specific calendar day you find as somebody's garden, not a state recommendation.

Harvest when about half of the leaves have dried and bent toward the ground. Do not wait for all of them. Then cure. Put the bulbs in a well-ventilated spot with bright, indirect light for a few days. When they are dry, cut the leaves off and store the bulbs somewhere cool and dark. A sealed jar on a bright shelf is how you ruin them. A vented ceramic keeper is the cool and dark part of that instruction. Get this.

If regular garlic has disappointed you, UF/IFAS Extension Leon County makes a case for elephant garlic, a bulbing leek that takes heat better. That report is written for the Panhandle, not Orange County, so read it as a lead rather than a local rule.

For the cooking end, a swing-basket press handles cloves. Get this. A silicone roll tube gets the skins off a whole head with your hands staying clean. Get this. Store garlic at the grocery is year-round and usually California or imported. A Florida bulb is a late-spring pull, if the cool months cooperated.