Garlic Harvest

Garlic!

The garlic began to be harvested just as the pantry released its last clove from 2010. I've been a bit behind with posting, but rest assured its because I've been busy with the garden!

This garlic was planted last fall (2010). I bought 'seed' garlic from a local farm stand and an Amish man at the farmers market. This year I will try planting my own seed garlic. Seed garlic is the biggest and best garlic heads from the harvest put aside for planting the next successive crop. If you do this enough times over the years you will essentially breed yourself a garlic suited for the individual environmental conditions of your own backyard.

Garlic is ready to dig up when the tops of the plant start dying back/turning brown- which I guess is by about the end of July. The garlic pictured above was photographed minutes after being removed from the ground. Next the garlic is allowed to cure out in the garden row. The garlic is essentially ready to use- NOW. However, if you are planning on storing it, curing is important. It allows the garlic to dry out and adjust to conditions outside of its once cozy home in the earth. As mentioned earlier, we had JUST used the last of the previous years garlic... which means garlic can be stored about a year though its quality certainly deteriorates slowly over time- most notably towards spring and summer it seems (almost as if the garlic finally realizes its been tricked, mine begin to grow green shoots around that time in the pantry).

I left the garlic out in my nice drought dry garden row for a day or so and then trimmed the stems and brushed off more dirt and moved it to the front porch for about a week or so (where I will admit I had forgotten about it). I selected out the best of the best and set them aside in a special bowl which I'm storing in the pantry with a special note reading, "This garlic is for fall planting" lest my boyfriend accidentally try to use any of them.

Finally I went out on the porch and sat down with the scissors to trim the stems and roots down a bit more and placed them in an mesh sack which formerly belonged to onions. Sure people braid garlic, but not me- that's mostly for 'soft neck' garlic (usually the sort you will find at the grocery store). I have only ever grown 'hard neck' garlic after I realized that with hard neck garlic the cloves are much larger and easier to work with (ever get annoyed by trying to use the little cloves in the center of your grocery store garlic head?). When I spoke to the Amish farmer I asked him about the soft vs hard neck garlic. He agreed that anyone who cooks likes the hard neck garlic better and he seemed to feel that soft neck garlic is only kind Californians grow. I wonder where most commercial garlic doses come from?