Seed garlic bought in summer has to sit for two or three months before it goes in the ground, and how you keep it in that time decides what you plant. Garlic wants dark, airy, dry and around room temperature. The two ways people lose bulbs are a hot shed, which dries the cloves to paper, and a sealed container or a cold fridge, which brings on mould or early sprouting.
Buying early is sensible, because the popular varieties sell out well before autumn. It does mean you are storing living plant material through the hottest part of the year. A bulb sitting in its papery skin looks inert, but it is dormant rather than dead, and the conditions around it are what tell it whether to stay that way.
Keep it out of the fridge
This is the one that catches people, because chilling garlic is a real technique. It is just a planting technique, not a storage one.
Cold in the range of roughly 0 to 10 degrees is exactly the signal that ends dormancy. That is the whole basis of the fridge trick used to grow cold-climate varieties in warm districts, and it works because the cold convinces the clove that winter has been and gone. Do that in January and you get bulbs sprouting in a crisper drawer months before you can plant them, often with mould as well, since a crisper is a humid place by design.
Use the fridge deliberately, for four to six weeks immediately before planting, and only where your winter is too mild to do the job. The rest of the time, garlic belongs at room temperature.
Dark, airy, dry, and not too warm
Four things matter, and none of them cost anything.
- Darkness. Light is one of the cues that ends dormancy. A dark cupboard or pantry is ideal. A windowsill or an open bowl on the bench is not.
- Airflow. Garlic respires, and moisture has to go somewhere. The mesh or net bag it arrived in is the best container you will find. A paper bag left open at the top also works. Never a sealed plastic bag or a lidded container, which will sweat and rot the bulb from the inside.
- Steady, moderate temperature. Somewhere around 15 to 20 degrees suits it. Ordinary indoor room temperature in a cool part of the house is fine.
- Low humidity. Damp brings mould and root initiation. A bathroom or a laundry is the wrong room.
Not the shed. A tin shed or a closed garage through an Australian summer can sit well above 40 degrees for hours at a stretch. That heat dries cloves until they are shrivelled and hollow, and a shrivelled clove has nothing left to grow with. This is the single most common way home gardeners lose seed garlic before planting.
The most reliable spots in a typical house are the bottom shelf of a pantry, a linen cupboard on the cooler side of the house, or a box under a bed in a spare room. All of them are dark, stable and dry.
A correction worth making
You will often read that ripening fruit will make your garlic sprout, because fruit gives off ethylene gas. It is a tidy story and it is not right. Garlic is not sensitive to ethylene, which is why ethylene treatments are used on onions and potatoes to suppress sprouting but are not used on garlic at all.
Keep garlic out of the fruit bowl anyway, just for the real reasons: the bowl is in the light, ripening fruit raises the humidity around it, and the kitchen bench is usually the warmest flat surface in the house.
Leave the bulbs whole
Do not break bulbs into cloves until you are ready to plant, ideally within a day. The papery wrapper around a whole bulb is what stops individual cloves drying out, and once you break that seal the clock speeds up. Splitting garlic in February for an April planting will cost you a good share of it.
When to plant
Wait for the soil to cool rather than watching the calendar. As a rough guide:
| Where you are | Planting window | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cool and alpine Tasmania, Victorian high country, southern NSW tablelands, ACT |
Late March to May | Around Anzac Day is the traditional marker. Hardneck types do well here. |
| Temperate Melbourne, Sydney, coastal NSW and Victoria |
April to May | Most types work. Plant on the later side in the mildest coastal pockets. |
| Mediterranean Adelaide, Perth and the south west of WA |
April to May | Softneck types are the safer choice. |
| Subtropical Brisbane, northern NSW |
Mid April to May | Choose subtropical varieties, or chill a cold-climate one first. |
| Arid and semi-arid Inland NSW, SA and WA |
April to May | Cold nights help. Keep water up once growth starts. |
| Tropical Far north Queensland, the Top End |
Marginal | Garlic rarely bulbs well here. Day-length-neutral subtropical types are the only real prospect. |
Scroll the table sideways on a phone.
Frequently asked questions
My garlic has already sprouted in storage. Is it ruined?
Not necessarily. A clove with a short green shoot will usually still grow, though it may bulb a little earlier and smaller. Plant it as soon as the soil is cool enough rather than trying to stop it.
Some bulbs have gone soft or mouldy. What happened?
Moisture, almost always. Either they were sealed in plastic, or they were stored somewhere humid. Discard soft or mouldy bulbs rather than planting them, since you would be planting the rot into your bed.
Can I plant supermarket garlic instead?
You can, but it is a gamble. Much of it is imported, often treated to suppress sprouting, and rarely suited to Australian conditions or labelled by variety. Seed garlic is sold for planting and named, so you know what you are growing.
How long will seed garlic keep?
Stored properly, a few months, which is all you need between a summer purchase and an autumn planting. It is not something to hold over for a second season.
One shipping note. We cannot send garlic bulbs to Western Australia or Tasmania, because of their plant quarantine requirements. Everywhere else in Australia is fine.
Related growing guides
- Which garlic should I grow? A flavour and variety guide
- Hardneck or softneck: which garlic suits your climate
- Growing purple garlic where winters are mild
Ready to plant? Browse our Vegetable Seeds.
Ethylene sensitivity in garlic follows the UC Davis Postharvest Technology Center produce facts for garlic.
1 comment
Linda
Best advice I’ve read about planting garlic! Thank you