garlic harvest

Early last November, Kristin and I planted out four rows of garlic. Each row was one hundred feet long. Each clove was six inches apart on eight inch rows. For reference and arithmetic, that works out to about six pounds of garlic seed for the whole planting.

We pulled up a few green garlic here and there, took off the scapes, mulched and weeded, but for the most part we left the garlic bed alone.

After watching the leaves die back and change from green to brown, we decided that it was time for the harvest.

We had incorporated leaves and manure into the bed in early October. Our normally dense clay soil was a bit looser at harvest time. The leaf mold and soil fell off the roots fairly easily.

Between the two of us it didn’t take long at all to pull everything up and load the cart.

The longest process was tying up the bunches and hanging them from the barn rafters to dry.

We’ll dry the garlic for a few weeks, trim the stems and roots off then sort through to select the best seed for next year. The rest we’ll eat.