Garlic Is A Good Thing

Garlic is not a quick crop. We planted a 4′ x 8′ garden bed with approximately 100 cloves last fall. You want to plant the garlic cloves late enough in the fall so they get enough root growth with keep them in the ground during the frost-heave cycles but not too much top growth.  When it turns cold in the winter, you mulch them in and wait for Spring.

When Spring comes you pull back the mulch and let them start to grow… and grow… and grow. Finally when the tops turn brown and fall over it is time to harvest the garlic. Using a small garden fork, we worked them up out of the soil. Yes, a few heads got damaged but that’s just the way it goes.

Garlic Ready To Harvest

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Now they need to cure in the sun. We laid them out on the wire sifter and set them on top of an empty compost bin. I didn’t even rinse them because I didn’t want to add any more moisture to the drying time. In fact, with the rainy weather we had I was constantly covering and uncovering them with a tarp but the outer skins finally got nice and “papery”.

Garlic Curing In Sun

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I cleaned them up some by rubbing them gently with a towel and cut off the roots to prepare them for storage. After watching a couple of videos on YouTube I decided to try my hand at braiding them. I got 9 braids with 10 heads each and a couple of extra on the side.

How do they look?

Braided Garlic

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Of course, quite a few cloves will have to be saved back to plant this fall.  Garlic is a very adaptable plant. If you use the largest cloves to replant it will grow  larger heads. Repeat the process each fall when you plant.

The actual harvest was 95 heads but since Bob and I use about 2 heads a week this won’t last until the next harvest but it’s a good start. At least I know that they were grown in good soil and nothing bad was sprayed on them. Looks like I’ll be planting 2 beds full this year

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