📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Falling Garlic & Planting Depth
- 🥀 Why do garlic stems flop over? If you planted individual cloves and the stems are falling over, it usually means the plant is diseased (root rot) or suffering from a severe lack of water during its active leaf-growth stage. (However, see the hilarious exception at the bottom of this thread!)
- 📏 How Deep to Plant: A good rule of thumb is to plant garlic so the top of the clove is buried exactly 1 to 1.5 times the length of the clove itself. If you plant too shallow in loose, sandy soil, the roots will dry out too fast, leading to weak, floppy stems.
- 🧅 Garlic is NOT an Onion: Many gardeners pull the dirt away from onion bulbs in late summer to help them size up. Do NOT do this to garlic! Exposing a garlic bulb to the sun and air will cause the papery outer wrappers to split, which drastically reduces its storage life.
🌍 You’re reading a translated thread from our Russian-language forum. These growers garden in climates very similar to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maine, and Ontario (short summers, late frosts, and cold soil).
Have your garlic stems ever inexplicably flopped over? Drop a comment below! We’d love to compare notes.
Why are the garlic stems flopping over?
Last fall, I planted a few whole garlic bulbs in the strawberry patch as an experiment. I really did not like the result. The stems just flopped over and splayed out in every direction, getting in the way and making it impossible to work around them.
The space taken up by the sprawling, fallen stems was so large that I could have planted way more individual cloves in that spot. I got tired of it and just dug them all up. I did not like those messy, floppy garlic plants at all. 🧄🙅♀️
Galiy (Galina) wrote:
…The stems just flopped over and splayed out in every direction…
Galya, that is very strange. The stems of garlic shouldn’t be flopping over like that. If the stem is dry and falling over, it usually means the garlic is sick or diseased. 🥀
Aleksan9ra (Ludmila) wrote:
If the stem is dry and falling over, it usually means the garlic is sick or diseased.
Garlic stems and leaves will also flop over if they were planted too shallow AND suffered from a lack of moisture during the period of active foliage growth. 💧
MADanilich (Andrey) wrote:
…if they were planted too shallow AND suffered from a lack of moisture…
Andrey, I’m not going to argue with you, I’ll just state my opinion.
Deep planting is suitable for overwintering (hardneck) garlic. But for spring-planted (softneck) garlic, deep planting is pointless. In fact, I deliberately plant both my hardneck and softneck garlic quite shallow in the spring (when growing them from indoor transplants). This allows me to harvest much larger bulbs, especially for the softneck varieties. And I have never noticed a healthy garlic plant flopping over during active growth, even when planted shallow. 🌱
Aleksan9ra (Ludmila) wrote:
Deep planting is suitable for overwintering (hardneck) garlic.
We weren’t specifying which type of garlic it was, which is why I didn’t get into the fine details.
When I say “deep,” I mean that the clove is planted so the dirt covering it is exactly 1 to 1.5 times the length of the clove itself. That is a normal planting depth. Here is the nuance:
Garlic has a complex root system. It will grow poorly if the soil is too loose and dries out rapidly (which happens if you plant it too shallowly). The plant simply won’t get enough moisture, which leads to weak, “flimsy” stems and foliage, especially on sandy or sandy-loam soils. If the soil is heavier but rich in organic matter and gets timely moisture, it’s fine.
Do not expose the bulbs!
Aleksan9ra (Ludmila) wrote:
…shallow planting allows me to harvest much larger bulbs…
In loose, well-prepared soil, planting depth does NOT affect the final size of a softneck garlic bulb.
Garlic is not an onion! With onions, you pull the dirt away to expose half the bulb to the sun when it gets large, to help it size up. You should NEVER do this with garlic. If a garlic bulb is even partially exposed from the soil, the outer papery wrappers will crack and split, which will drastically reduce its shelf life and storage capability. 🧅🚫
Bulb size is determined by fertilization and moderate, stable soil moisture (which is usually achieved by good mulching and infrequent, but quality, feedings). Two feedings per season are enough, assuming you prepped the bed properly before planting.
So, Ludmila, I can agree with you on some things and disagree on others – I just don’t know your specific soil type. This is just my experience and growing technique! There is a lot to say about garlic, so this is just a quick overview.
Aleksan9ra (Ludmila) wrote:
Galya, that is very strange. The stems of garlic shouldn’t be flopping over like that. If the stem is dry and falling over, it usually means the garlic is sick.
Guys, I literally said I planted a WHOLE bulb! 😂
There were 8 cloves in that bulb, which means 8 stems shot up from the exact same spot. How on earth were they supposed to stand up straight? They were completely in each other’s way and pushed each other outwards, so they all flopped over! 🤦♀️🧄
The hilarious ending to this thread brings up a great question: Why would anyone plant an entire, un-separated head of garlic in the first place?This is actually a very popular technique among permaculture gardeners (often called “Garlic Clumps” or planting for green garlic). If you plant a whole bulb, you aren’t trying to harvest a large bulb later. Instead, you harvest the massive flush of green stalks in early spring like scallions (green onions). As Galina found out the hard way, if you let a clump grow to full size, the plants will fight for space and push each other flat onto the ground!
