Columbus Day means it’s time to plant garlic: George’s Plant Pick of the Week

Here’s PennLive garden writer George Weigel’s Plant Pick of the Week for this week:

* Common name: Garlic

* Botanical name: Allium sativum

* What it is: Garlic is a flavorful, nutritious, and long-keeping onion-family plant that’s unusual in that it’s best planted in the fall to harvest the following summer.

Individual cloves that are split from golfball-sized bulbs are ideally planted in Pennsylvania in mid to late October. Columbus Day is a good garlic-planting memory guide (as is St. Patrick’s Day for planting peas).

The cloves put down roots and remain dormant underground until spring, when strappy foliage emerges, followed by flowering stalks (scapes) in June.

New bulbs are ready to harvest in early to mid-July.

Stiff-neck or hard-neck garlic grows best in Pennsylvania as o