Garlic planting

[madmum]

Can I use shop bought garlic broken into cloves to plant?
If so what should I do with it to get it to sprout? Does it needs to have produced a shoot before I plant it?

[madmum]

[tim]

This may help a bit. http://www.garlicworld.co.uk/garden/page2.html

Shop garlic? You can, but:
1. It may be continental & be less suited to the UK.
2. It will not necessarily be certified seed - free of white rot etc. And that you do not want.
3. It is frequently of poor size, & the bigger the cloves, the bigger the bulbs. I reckon that a 'seed' bulb should weigh at least 75gm.

[Jesse]

I agree with tim that ideally you should buy from a reputable garlic supplier. But unless I have been looking in the wrong places I can't believe the price of "seed" garlic, it was over £10 for 4 bulbs. I bought some cloves from my local farm shop, nice large sized red/purple cloves and grown locally. Got a fantastic crop this year and no signs of white rot, just some rust but then everyone else at our site got that too.

Tim, do you re-buy seed garlic each year or do you hold onto some of your own cloves for planting the following year?

[Mubgrub]

Kings are selling 3 bulbs for 1.95 ;D

[daisymay]

we went for the stuff from the organic seed catalogue:

http://www.organiccatalog.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=141

£3.95 for 150 grams

[Georgie]

Same here, daisymay, and it was much more successful than the shop bought stuff.   ;D

G xx

[Jesse]

Looks like I was shopping in the wrong place, thanks for the links, although it was the purple garlic I wanted and they don't seem to supply it.

[terrace max]

any of these any good?

http://www.seedsofitaly.sagenet.co.uk/onions.htm

[Jesse]

Exactly what I'm looking for TM, thank you :D. I can't believe the price difference, that's shocking :o I've just checked the place I looked at last year, somewhere on the isle of wight, and 4 bulbs are £9 + £4.75 postage.