h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

November is a good time to plant garlic, which requires a long growing season. For the last two years I have planted mine in February and it has been ready to harvest in August - i.e. after 6 months in the ground. Plant it now and you can harvest a little earlier.

If the ground is very wet then simply make a ridge, about 8 to 10 cm high and plant into that. Don't use the stuff you buy in the supermarket, use a seed merchant and get a variety suited for this country (I'm talking about the UK). Separate each head into cloves and put them in, point up, about 10 cm apart and 5 cm deep. For every clove you plant you get a head of garlic to harvest. It is ready when the foliage goes yellow and starts to fall over.

A guy in a gardening magazine I was reading says he's grown lots of garlic over the years both from special bulbs and general supermarket garlic, and hasn't noticed any major difference.

What does make a difference, apparently, is using the biggest and plumpest cloves on the bulbs to grow.

Never tried it myself, but thought I'd mention it.

I bought some garlic from a Thai foodshop because I noticed that it always sprouted,
so I bought some just for growing. To make sure it was going to sprout I chitted the cloves in ice cube trays till there were shoots and roots (46 sprouted out of 48) I then planted them knowing they would grow.
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