It's really easy, Janie.
You can plant anytime you can work the soil. I usually shoot for Thanksgiving weekend, but have actually planted as late as Christmas week.
Prep the soil. Work in lots of compost (garlic prefers a light, airy soil, but will grow in almost anything). Then amend the soil with bone meal, dried blood, and wood ashes at the rate of 1 cup each for every ten row feet.
With your hoe or other tool, dig a furrow about two inches deep. Pop the garlic cloves (i.e., separate them from the bulb), and plant them 4-6 inches apart by pushing the root end down into the bottom of the trench so the tip is barely showing. Back-fill the trench, and mound it with two inches of additional soil. That way you won't have to mulch it. But you can, if you want. Straw works best.
If the garlic should sprout before going winter-dormant, don't worry about it. Worst that will happen is that the leaf tips will get frost bitten. But the garlic will start regrowing in about February.
Alternatively, if you want to plant it in a block instead of a row, amend the soil as noted. Then lay down a panel of lattice. Plant one clove centered in each opening. You now have both perfect spacing, and a weed guard.
Once the garlic starts growing in the spring keep in scrupulously weeded. It doesn't tolerate competition.
Long about may, side-dress with the same amendments, at the same rate.
Most garlic ripens in Kentucky in July. About three weeks before (say, about the tenth of June) stop watering. The garlic will tell you when it's ready, because the leaves will start to turn yellow, then brown. When 2/3 of the leaves have turned, you can lift the bulbs. Be sure and dig them. Trying to pull the plants up by the leaves just doesn't work.
You can use garlic fresh. But you'll want to cure most of it, both for table use and as seed stock. Reserve your largest bulbs for seed.
Bundle the garlic in groups of about ten plants. Hang them in a warm, airy place, but not in direct sunlight. When the leaves, right up to the neck, are brown and dry, the garlic is ready, and you can store it away.
BTW, hardneck garlic, about a month before its ripe, sends up scapes---rond stems with a bulbous mass on the tip. You want to break those off for two reasons. First, they're a culinary treat of their own. And second, if you leave them on they divert some of the plant's energy away from the bulb.