Hi Regina, For the sake of all reading this, we really do recommend planting garlic in the fall versus spring. Garlic require a natural dormant period that includes cold temperatures. When you plant in the fall, the garlic starts growing roots until the temperatures freeze and then waits until spring to continue growing. This allows the garlic plants to get a head start on root growth and then explode out of the ground once temperatures warm up in spring.
If you plant in the spring, the seeds you find are usually for softneck garlic as softneck does not need as much (or any) cold exposure like hardneck garlic. However, if you plant in the spring again, it must be very early—as the soil is workable and long before you would consider planting any other garden crops. When you plant garlic so late in the spring, it will often just form rounds which are single clove bulbs. These rounds are perfectly good to eat and can be replanted in fall. They will usually form good sized bulbs with multiple cloves the next summer. If you leave the garlic in the ground, just note it will almost always be smaller than fall-planted garlic and will sometimes not form cloves.
Hi Regina, For the sake of all reading this, we really do recommend planting garlic in the fall versus spring. Garlic require a natural dormant period that includes cold temperatures. When you plant in the fall, the garlic starts growing roots until the temperatures freeze and then waits until spring to continue growing. This allows the garlic plants to get a head start on root growth and then explode out of the ground once temperatures warm up in spring.
If you plant in the spring, the seeds you find are usually for softneck garlic as softneck does not need as much (or any) cold exposure like hardneck garlic. However, if you plant in the spring again, it must be very early—as the soil is workable and long before you would consider planting any other garden crops. When you plant garlic so late in the spring, it will often just form rounds which are single clove bulbs. These rounds are perfectly good to eat and can be replanted in fall. They will usually form good sized bulbs with multiple cloves the next summer. If you leave the garlic in the ground, just note it will almost always be smaller than fall-planted garlic and will sometimes not form cloves.