Fall planting gives garlic time to get rooted

Growing good garlic is a lot like growing daffodils. Nothing could be easier, but you need to plant the bulbs in the fall. Spring planting is too late for daffodils, and it's also too late for garlic.

With fall planting, garlic bulbs will have time to put their roots down deep so they can produce big, plump cloves by the time the tops of the plants die down next summer.

You don't need much space to grow a lot of garlic, but you do need a spot with full sun and good drainage. I always plant garlic in a raised bed for the good drainage that it provides. Before planting, I spread compost an inch or two deep over the bed, then dig it into the soil.

If you've never grown garlic before, you can find bulbs at garden centers. Some mail-order catalogs offer a choice of many different varieties, with variations of flavor, color, size and keeping ability.

To plant, separate each garlic bulb into individual cloves. Plant them pointed-end up, 4 inches apart, covered with 1 to 2 inches of soil.

After the soil surface freezes, spread a 1-inch layer of shredded leaves or other mulch on the ground over the bulbs for winter protection.

Once you grow some garlic, you may never have to buy the bulbs again. Just save a few of your biggest, best bulbs from the summer harvest and replant them in the fall.

Garlic relatives you can plant now include the many different kinds of multiplier onions. Best known of these are Egyptian walking onions, which provide a steady source of bulbs you can harvest whenever the ground isn't frozen in fall and winter, plus fresh green tops in early spring.

Walking onions grow 2 or 3 feet tall, then form clusters of bulblets on top. In late summer, the weight of the bulblets topples the stalks to the ground and the bulblets root into the soil where they fall. Left alone, these onions could "walk" all over the garden, but their spreading is easy to curtail. I just cut off the clusters of bulblets and toss them on the ground in the area where wherever I want them to grow, then share the extras with other gardeners.

Another type of multiplier onion I've been growing for years is the yellow potato onion. It produces clusters of small bulbs that I save for replanting, plus many good-sized bulbs that have proved to be excellent keepers, often lasting a full year without shriveling.

Potato onions will never replace big, sweet slicer onions, but they're an excellent cooking onion. Thanks to them, I haven't bought an onion at the grocery store in years.