Thanks to Kitty for the tip: If you plant a garlic clove, it will grow into a whole new head. Seems pretty obvious when you think about it. I don’t know… I guess I figured it would grow a new garlic plant, which would form seed pods, and then you’d plant the seeds and get more garlic.

What I’m doing now is saving a clove or two from every head of garlic that I buy and planting them, or if there are leftover cloves that sprout, I go ahead and plant them too. (Sprouted cloves don’t taste good anymore anyway.) Unfortunately, it takes a long time for garlic to be ready to harvest, so I’ll have to plant a lot to keep myself supplied, but it’s not too complicated: just stick it in the ground, right?

Garlic is ready to harvest when its green top turns brown and dries up. Once you harvest it, dry it by hanging it in a cool, dry place for a few weeks, then cut off the tops and store it. How long does it take for garlic to be ready to harvest? Common wisdom is that you plant garlic on the shortest day of the year and harvest it on the longest, so… a while. But it’s not like I’m trying to plant commercial garlic. I just stick what I’ve got in the ground, and when it’s ready, I’ll pull it up. And so should you!