To grow garlic, you’ll have to start in the fall.
Buy organic or unsprayed hardneck garlic—softneck and elephant garlic can both be grown similarly but are not as foolproof in my experience. Get it home and break up the cloves, leaving the papery skins on. If you buy garlic from a farmers’ market, you’re almost guaranteed to have garlic that will germinate.
Go to your patch of dirt and poke into the ground to form holes about 1 inch (2.5 cm) wide and 6 inches (15 cm) deep. Much deeper than that and the garlic sprout won’t make it to the surface. Much wider and the clove can flip over when dropped. The traditional tool for this is called a dibbler—literally a pointy stick about 1 inch (2.5 cm) wide and 6 inches (15 cm) long, designed to dig the hole for garlic.