Garlic is ready for harvest

During last evening’s garden walk I checked the garlic. The soft neck variety is ready to harvest.

The goal is to pull the garlic just as the individual cloves reach maximum size and before they begin to split to make more small plants. Cooks like large cloves since they are easy to peel. This head is showing signs of splitting. The head on the right has small stems emerging at the base of the first green leaf. This is just past prime picking. The other plants show less of the ‘sprouting’ and look perfect for harvest this morning.

Soft neck garlic ready to bundle and cure.

Garlic is dug from the ground (not pulled), soil is shaken from the root ball and then allowed to dry in the sun for no more than an hour. The idea is to allow most of the soil to dry and fall off the heads before they are set to cure. Do not wash the heads with water as this will reduce storage life. The plants are then tied with string into bundles of ten or so plants.

A well ventilated barn will be used to hang the garlic while it cures for 10 days. Curing improves flavor and shelf life. The bundles can be hung over a wire or rod or rope. As the leaves dry they will shrink. So check your knots on each bundle and snug up the loose knots so the hanging garlic does not slip and fall to the ground. This same method is used to cure field onions. Onions, though, benefit from more time in the sun. After digging they are left for a day or more before bundling. We have 150 feet of onions and this quick rehearsal on 25 feet of garlic will help when we get a couple hundred pounds of onion.

All this garlic was planted in November. Normally planted in October, the month delay seems to have caused no problem. The plants emerge and establish roots. They will grow some leaves during winter but the magic is happening underground in the root system. I just learned that shallots are planted at the same time as garlic in Oklahoma. Trying to plant shallots in the spring results in small summer bulbs. Mine are very small again. I plan to cure these poor sized bulbs and replant them in October along with garlic.

Garlic hanging to cure.

So here is this year’s crop hanging in the open barn. It will get no direct sun and will get plenty air circulation. They look a mess now but about 70 of the heads are very high quality. The balance of ten to twenty heads are over-ripe or undersized.

When we get to the onions, we will need 8 times more space. Yes, this has been a good rehearsal.

The Stiff neck variety will need more time to ripen. Even ripe the heads will not be as big as the soft neck. The hard neck of this variety is formed by a flower stalk. But no such stalks have emerged? Maybe, like with most things, I just need to be patient.