Yes, replanting garlic harvest works great and many growers do it year after year with fine results. You can save your best bulbs to plant next fall and keep a garlic line going for decades. This practice saves you money and builds up plants suited to your garden.
I have kept the same garlic line going in my garden for eight years now by saving seed garlic from harvest each summer. The bulbs have gotten bigger and more reliable as the plants adapt to my soil and climate over time. Each year I set aside 10-15 of my best bulbs before using any for cooking.
USDA research explains why this works so well for home growers like us. All garlic that we grow today comes from cloves, not true seeds. This means every bulb you plant carries the same genes as its parent bulb. When you save garlic for planting from your strongest plants, you pass those traits to the next crop.
Choose your garlic seed stock from the biggest and healthiest bulbs in your harvest each year. Look for tight wrappers with no soft spots, mold, or damage from your digging fork. Skip any bulbs that showed disease signs during the growing season. Even one sick bulb in your seed stock can spread problems through next year's entire crop.
Store your seed bulbs in a cool, dry spot with good air flow until planting time in fall arrives. A mesh bag or open basket works better than a sealed container that traps moisture inside. Check on them once a month and remove any that start to soften or sprout too early.
Rotate your planting spot every 3-4 years to break disease cycles in the soil. Garlic pathogens build up over time when you plant the same bed year after year. Moving to fresh ground gives you a clean start and cuts pressure from soil-borne problems that hurt your yields.
Buy certified disease-free stock every 4-5 years to refresh your garlic line. This brings in clean genes and stops the slow buildup of viruses. Mix the new stock with your saved seed garlic from harvest to get the best of both old and new.
Plant only the largest outer cloves from each bulb you saved for the next season. Small inner cloves grow small bulbs no matter what else you do for them. Save those little cloves for cooking instead of wasting garden space on plants that will never reach full size at harvest time.
Read the full article: Growing Garlic Successfully in Any Climate
