Allotments 4 All

Following on from my stupid question last year (or was it the year before?) about growing garlic, for how many years can one grow garlic from cloves saved from the year before?

Can this be done indefinitely or should you buy in a fresh stock after so many years?

Not stupid in my view ...

I think that if you select your best cloves for replanting each year, then theoretically you could carry on forever as you would be increasing the vigour of the stock. However, I suspect that in reality, other variables eg fungal infections etc will knock the crop back, so you may find you need to introduce fresh stock occasionally. Deal with that when you need to.

Derek :)

Garlic adapts to the conditions it grows in so unless it gets a virus you should be able to carry on with your own stock

The suggestion that I heard a few years ago has worked for me.

Sow the big fat juicy cloves and eat the small ones. I found that year on year the cloves became smaller and, as Curry suggests, buy new ones at that time

As Flytrapman says, garlic adapts, but not that quickly, which is why growing from supermarket bulbs is not a good idea, they tend to be from warmer climes and, unless you live in Cornwall or the Scillies, they don't do well in the cooler weather

Phil

You get the biggest bulbs by planting the biggest cloves from the biggest bulbs. If the stock starts deteriorating, buy in more, but not unless.

If you use a rotation schema of 4 or 5 years ( I use for garlic 8 years!)  you can go on all the time growing your own garlic. And indeed, put the biggest and healthiest ones in the ground!  I do that for at least  27 years now .