It's garlic harvest time!
Actually, it was garlic harvest time two weeks ago for me here (last week of May), but I have been so busy harvesting all sorts of different crops from the food forest, so I have not had time to post the garlic update until now.
Garlic is my favorite crop to grow. It requires very little attention from me during the growing season. Not too many pests bother garlic. And best of all, we always seem to consume all the garlic we grow. Of course I always save the largest cloves for replanting in the Fall. It has been years since we had to purchase garlic form the grocery stores.
From my past experience, garlic seems to cure better if I stop watering two to three weeks prior to harvest time. Rain just prior to harvest time can cause the protective garlic wrappers to split. Without proper protective skin, garlic tends to rot in storage. However, with all the Spring rain we received this year, it presented a challenge for most people growing garlic in our area. I have spoken to my favorite local farmer. He told me he would have to dry most of the garlic he harvested this year because all the rain has caused his garlic to split and some of them have started to rot in the ground.
My husband and I visited this farmer mentioned above prior to starting our food forest journey. The old farmer told us that our area tend to receive a lot of rain right around the time when we were supposed to harvest garlic. He joked around and said that farmers just had to work with whatever the Mother Nature gave us. The year we visited his farm, we also received a ton of Spring rain. The farmer pulled out some of his garlic to show me what rain did to his harvest. I have always known we want to grow garlic, so I kept this in mind when my husband started building our raised beds in the garden.
When my husband first built the raised beds, he attached some PVC hoops at the top, so we could use shade tarps in the Summer months when it gets too hot and greenhouse plastic when it's freezing cold in the Winter months. We also use the PVC hoops and shade tarps when we have bad storms with hail. This has saved our crops many times in the past. The PVC hoops also come in handy when it won't stop raining prior to garlic harvest time. We are able to use greenhouse plastic on top to stop the rain for our garlic in the raised beds a couple of weeks prior to harvest time. This has worked perfectly for us every year. I don't have to worry about too much rain coming down just prior to garlic harvest time causing issues for my homegrown garlic in storage.
The harvested garlic are now hanging in the house to cure. When we enter our house, it smells like an Italian restaurant. It should take 4 to 6 weeks for this job to complete. When you purchase limes or onions from the grocery stores, save the mash bags. Store the cured, trimmed homegrown garlic in the mash bags in a dark, cool place. Depending on variety, they should last from 4 to 12 months in storage. Homegrown garlic is my favorite crop to share with friends and visiting guests.
