how to grow garlic?

is it possible to plant garlic bulbs ive bought from the supermarket that have sprouted shoots whilst in the fridge? I've got quite a few (teach me to buy so many!!), they are just plain garlic (not smoked) ... and have long green shoots growing out of them!
if I do plant them, should I plant each bulb individually in, say, a jam jar size pot? and do I leave them outside or keep them indoors when it gets cold?

thank you for any replies!!

 

Hello Sue, You don't say where you live or what the soil is like, but certainly in the south of the UK on reasonably light soil, garlic should do quite well. The drawback with planting sprouting bulbs is that ideally they should have formed roots first, so I think that they'd bolt and run to seed before forming decent cloves next year. I stand to be corrected by anyone who's successfully done it, though

 

Risk with supermarket garlic is that it is a variety suited to growing in the Mediterranean climate, rather than here.

You can plant it and see, and lots of people seem to be happy to experiment like that, personally I hate that sort of experiment - months of growing time & effort, or an area of grow used that could have grown something else, to then have failure e.g. it bolts or dies in the winter.

You need to plant each individual clove, separated out, each will then form a new bulb-of-cloves. You can plant them in 9cm-ish pots, and then plant out later, but this is only normally done if the ground is not ready at the time they should be planted.

Some types are planted out now-ish, to over winter, and others in the spring.

Only other risk is that Supermarket garlic may bring disease with it - compared to certified disease free stock, but that is relatively expensive (but having said that, of all the things that you might just have-a-go-at, White Rot in Garlic / Onions is very difficult to get rid of once you have it on the plot, probably second only to Club Root on Brassicas)

 

thank you so much for your replies, really invaluable! ive tried getting it to sprout some roots in wet cotton wool on the window sill (seem to remember this worked with something I grew years ago at school!!). its organic garlic, so will see what happens - I will plant it in a pot to keep it out of the way of anything else.
a couple of months ago I planted some supermarket spuds that had gone green and sprouted eyes ... had a mega crop, from 6 plants, of gorgeous spuds ... so im optimistic. if nothing grows i'll just bin it!
thanks again

 

Good luck, Sue!