Plant Garlic and Broad Beans Now for the First Harvest of Next Summer
Garlic needs winter cold to form plump bulbs, and hardy broad beans sown now crop weeks ahead of spring sowings. Both go in this month.
Photo: Surya Prakash / Unsplash
Most of the vegetable garden is winding down, but two crops do best when you plant them now. Garlic and broad beans spend the winter in the ground, and they reward you with the earliest harvests of next year, ready before most summer vegetables are even in flower.
Garlic needs the cold
Garlic forms a proper bulb of separate cloves only after a spell of cold weather. Most varieties need one to two months at between 0°C and 10°C. Without that chill, a clove can grow into a single round bulb rather than dividing. Planting from mid-autumn to early winter gives it all the cold it needs.
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