Growing Great Garlic #2: Harvesting

by Renee Shepherd and Lindsay Del Carlo

Garlic is both easy to grow and takes up so little space that just about every gardener, even those with very limited space, can raise enough to be happily self-sufficient in this important and healthy cooking essential. Check out the especially flavorful garlic varieties we sell; they will be available for ordering in late summer. This is the second installment in documenting the whole process of planting, growing and harvesting garlic. Read the first installment on planting and growing here.

Garlic bulbs are ready to be harvested when the leafy tops are mostly dry and some begin to fall over.  Loosen one of the bulbs with a shovel, and gently pull it out of the ground. If it is fully formed with plump cloves, the other bulbs are ready as well. 

Dig up the rest, shake off any loose excess soil, but don’t try to really clean them up at this point because it will be much easier and less damaging if they dry out first. 

Lay the freshly harvested bulbs out on the garden bed to dry and rest in the sun for about a week. (If it is very hot in your area, put them in light or dappled shade.)

Lay the garlic on top of the garden bed to dry in the sun

After this initial drying the garlic bulbs will be dry and skins will be papery. Now it is easy to dust off excess clinging soil, trim the roots back, and cut off the tops. Next, lay the bulbs out in one layer in a cool, dry area with good air circulation out of the sun to cure for 2-3 more weeks. This period allows the bulbs to toughen up and be ready for storage. 
  

Let garlic dry further in a cool dry place after trimming back roots and tops

For best results, store your well-cured garlic in a cool and dry place (50°- 60° F would be ideal) and don’t stack the heads over 4 inches deep. With good storage conditions, you can expect about 6 to 8 months for softneck garlic varieties and 3 to 4 months for hardneck garlics. 

“Garlic keepers” made of terracotta or ceramic, or net/mesh bags allow some air circulation for garlic bulbs and work well to keep garlic for extended use.

 "Garlic Keepers" and net bags are great for storing garlic in a pantry

Growing Great Garlic #1: Planting

by Renee Shepherd and Lindsay Del Carlo

Garlic is both easy to grow and takes up so little space that just about every gardener, even those with very limited space, can raise enough to be happily self-sufficient in this important and healthy cooking essential. Check out the especially flavorful garlic varieties available on our website.

We will be documenting of the whole process of planting, growing and harvesting garlic. Here is our first installment: (our second installment about Harvesting and Curing can be read here.)

The fall weather of early to mid October (the same time as you would plant daffodil or tulip bulbs to over-winter) is a good time to plant garlic in most of the country. (In very mild climates, it can be planted clear through November.) You want to get the garlic plants actively growing before the days get too short and weather turns cold, so plants will over-winter successfully and produce big fat bulbs in early summer.

Garlic varieties ready for planting.

The first step is to prep the beds. We chose a garden bed in full sun and amended with lots of well-aged compost, and worked in a high nitrogen, granular organic fertilizer. We are using Down To Earth brand “Bio-Fish” fertilizer which has a high nitrogen content to grow hefty garlic bulbs, but there are lots of good organic brands of fertilizer choices nowadays available at garden centers; availability varies from region to region. Dr. Earth and MaxSea are two other good brands.

Organic Fertilizer & well-aged compost.            Spread compost evenly over bed & mix in.          Add organic fertilizer evenly & mix in.

Garlic bulbs need to be separated into individual cloves for planting. Each clove is planted 6 inches apart and 1½ inches deep with its tip pointing up and the root end down. Garlic planted in fall will establish vigorous roots before the weather turns cold and days get very short, then plants will grow vigorously throughout spring while each clove grows into a full head underground.

Separate bulb into individual cloves.   Plant cloves with tip pointing up & root end down.   Space cloves 6 in. apart & plant 1½ in. deep.   

Mulch bed with 4-5 in. of straw.

After planting the cloves, we are careful to add a thick straw mulch to the planting bed. Garlic tops will sprout up easily through the open texture of the straw.

Mulching the garlic bed keeps soil moisture consistent while fall weather is still warm after planting, and performs the critical task of protecting the garlic bed from erosion and nutrient leaching during the winter weather. In cold winter climates, where the ground freezes hard, the heavy mulch will also protect plants from frost heaving.


 

As the garlic plants grow and mature, look for several blog posts on taking care of them and on harvesting and curing and enjoying big heads of plump garlic cloves.

My Edible Front Yard: Year Three

 - By Sarah Renfro, Renee's Garden Business Manager


This is a follow-up to my original post from the summer of 2010, Creating My Edible Front Yard.

We are now finishing up our third year of front yard gardening and are happier than ever with the landscape. The biggest change that we have made is the removal of our massive Liquidambar tree. This tree was gorgeous in the fall but the canopy was shading our vegetable beds in prime summer growing season. Plus all those colorful leaves dropped onto my crops of fall veggies, requiring almost daily cleanup. After weighing the pros and cons, my husband and I decided that the tree must go.

Our garden before: with large Liquidambar tree

In keeping with the edible gardening theme, we selected a Manzanillo Olive as a replacement street tree. I was a bit nervous about the potential mess of a fruiting tree in this high traffic spot, but we harvested the olives before they dropped and enjoyed the process of curing them into salty, tasty treats!

After: with new olive tree

Our garden space now enjoys bright sunlight until late afternoon and we have taken full advantage of this. We removed some of the original perennial plantings from our largest raised bed so we can grow large crops of onions and garlic. We also grew potatoes for the first time this summer (in the large container that our olive tree came in). I had no idea that potatoes could taste so delicious!

Husband Brian loves the garlic harvest

Discovering potatoes!

It has been wonderful to introduce my son to the joy of growing food. His absolute favorite snack is fresh blueberries picked right from the bushes. One day in the middle of playing, he jumped up and ran into the kitchen saying “I want a snack.” Then he ran out the front door and into the garden to fill up on blueberries and strawberries.

Blueberries are my son's favorite

The addition of our backyard chickens (see my “Growing the Girls” post) has yielded an abundance of chicken poop. Of course, this rich fertilizer needs to be mixed and broken down to produce compost that can be added to our garden beds. We’ve developed a mini “dirt farm” to process this organic matter.  We also had success mixing in a slow release fertilizer prior to planting and at regular intervals in the growing season.

Experienced gardeners know that the key to a continuously producing garden is succession planting. It is very tempting to go on a seeding bonanza in early spring – fully planting all the beds at once. Then all your crops are ready at the same time. This year we tried planting our favorite veggies every 2-3 weeks so we had an ongoing supply of radishes, carrots, beets and lettuce. Homegrown salads almost year round!

The garden at work

Not everything has gone perfectly. We have an ongoing battle against leaf miner in our leafy greens – most of our chard and spinach went straight into the yard waste due to infestation. Plus a gopher dug a path of destruction thru several of our (underwired) beds before we called in the resident Renee’s gopher trapping expert, trial garden manager Lindsay del Carlo.

Now that the late summer harvest is in full swing, we have moved onto the next project – food preservation and canning. I hear the hiss of the pressure canner…the subject of a future blog post!