📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Spring Garlic Transplants
- What is Spring Garlic? In cooler climates, this usually refers to softneck garlic varieties. Unlike fall-planted hardnecks, they don’t produce scapes, have a milder flavor, and boast a much longer storage life.
- The Transplant Hack: If your garden soil is too cold or soggy in early spring, you can plant whole garlic bulbs in pots in a greenhouse. Once they sprout, you dig them up, crack the bulb into individual cloves, trim the roots slightly, and transplant them into the garden.
- Timing: Starting them indoors gives them a 2 to 3-week head start. This is a fantastic method if your climate (or your schedule) prevents you from direct-sowing early in the season.
- Onion Sets: The same rules apply to planting onion sets—if the ground is workable, direct sow to capture spring moisture. If it’s too wet, start them in trays first.
Photo author: Lubov’
Lyuda, is spring garlic a specific variety, or can you just plant any garlic in the spring? Mine is coming up really poorly right now, or is it just too early for it? Last year, the whole bed popped up all at once.
Da4nica wrote:
Lyuda, is spring garlic a specific variety, or can you just plant any garlic in the spring?
Katya, spring garlic is definitely a specific type (softneck). People often call it “southern” garlic because it thrives down south and grows really huge there. Down there, they usually plant it in February.
Spring (softneck) garlic doesn’t push out scapes, it stores incredibly well, and has a slightly different flavor profile—milder and not quite as pungent. It also requires a very specific growing technique, at least here in the Moscow region. If you dig it up in August, the bulbs are practically non-existent, they are just starting to form. That’s exactly when you need to be watering and feeding it. By late September, the bulbs will be large and ready to harvest.
Lyuda, can you write a dummy’s guide on how you start spring garlic indoors as transplants?
And my second question—can you do the same thing with regular onion sets (not shallots)?
Lyuda, good evening! I’ve never grown spring garlic from transplants before. If you plant the whole bulb in a pot, you’ll get a bunch of garlic shoots coming out of that one bulb. Do you then dig it up, separate it into individual cloves, and plant them like normal? I really want to try this method.
ohoh wrote:
Lyuda, can you write a dummy’s guide on how you start spring garlic indoors as transplants? And my second question—can you do the same thing with regular onion sets?
Olya, the weather here is so crazy right now that things change before your eyes. This morning, I planted whole garlic bulbs in the greenhouse to start them as transplants, planning to move them to the garden bed later, just like I described above. But when I went out after lunch to weed and hoe the strawberries, I realized there was absolutely no point in starting garlic in the greenhouse this year. The garden soil is already loose, warm, and perfectly moist right now. If I don’t plant it directly right now, I might miss the window and lose that good soil moisture.
So, I went and grabbed the garlic out of the greenhouse, cracked the bulbs into individual cloves, and direct-sowed them in the garden bed. Ended up planting a row of 40 cloves right down the middle of my young strawberry patch.
Same goes for the onion sets. If you had asked me this morning, I would have said it’s too early. But now, my mind has changed. My soil is workable, the weather is gorgeous. Tomorrow morning I’m prepping the bed, and after lunch, the onion sets are going in the ground. For me, it’s crucial to plant onions early to capture that spring moisture.
However, if your plot is soggy and the soil is still freezing cold, you should absolutely start your spring garlic in pots/trays right now. Later, when the ground dries out and warms up, you can plant them out as transplants. Don’t plant them too deep, just plant them like we normally plant onions. You will need to trim the roots back a little bit when transplanting.
Ni-nochka wrote:
…If you plant the whole bulb in a pot, you’ll get a bunch of garlic shoots. Do you then dig it up, separate it into individual cloves, and plant them like normal?
Nina, exactly! Yes, separate them into cloves, trim the roots back just a bit, make a furrow in the dirt, and plant them as usual.
Good afternoon Lyudmila and guests of the thread! Lyudmila, so you transplant the sprouted garlic cloves exactly like you would onion transplants? Is 2 weeks enough time for the garlic to grow in pots before planting it out in the dirt?
Tonya, yes, exactly like that. But spring garlic really needs a bit more time, about three weeks in the pot. However, if the soil becomes workable and you have the opportunity to get it in the garden, you can transplant it at any stage. You’ll still come out ahead on time, because the growth process was jump-started much earlier indoors/in the greenhouse.
This method is especially great for anyone who can’t get out to work in their garden to plant until May.
