The garlic had gotten ahead of me, yet again. It now had 3 – 4 brown leaves instead of the 2 indicating harvest time.
So on Thursday morning I was out there at 5:30AM as it was to hit mid 90’s and was wicked humid. I had some minor weeding to do as I wanted to reuse the mulch.
Then I moved the mulch from in front of, behind and between the plants on each row. This year I had the luxury of plenty of room to work.
The first row had the shallots in addition to garlic. They are French Grey shallots. I’ve grown them for several years, and never once managed to harvest them at the right time. But this year they were ready to harvest when the garlic was, so they got done first.
I’d left the markers in place for them, because I never had harvested on time and needed to find them. That’s the white bucket. It was about a 15’ row and I got some lovely heads/bunches from each plant.
I managed to get them dug by 8:30 and the sun had just burned off the fog. This garden will have the weeds scalped and we will be putting black plastic down in the next week or so. I hope to kill off the weeds, and probably will also kill the biology. In a month or so, we’ll take up the black plastic and see what comes up, and weed it out. Then I will put down hay mulch and it will be ready to restore the biology by next spring when I will plant.
I had 4½ rows 32’ long and they yielded this. The garlic is German Extra Hardy and grown from my own seed.
Garlic harvest July 2019
In the past I’d had this picnic table to work on in the shade of the white oak tree. But it had rotted away badly and was torn down last year during construction.
So I cobbled together this work station in the shade of the house. I’d have until nearly noon for shade. My helper friend was here but he had to get the foliar spraying done before he could help me.
I did the shallots first. I’d never cured them before as the tops had usually completely rotted away by the time I harvested. I did some research and you cure them much the same as garlic or onions. It said to lay them out but I have no place for that, so I thought I’d try braiding them. Not all cloves had a stem, but seemed to be fastened onto the root base. But I expect I will find cloves lying around that fell off.
I hung them in the front of the shed so I could pick up cloves and because they will finish before the garlic does. I did not trim the roots as directions I’d found said to do it later. Plus more cloves would have come off.
Then I set about cleaning up the garlic. There were a lot of rotting skins and at first I tried to save what I could. Pulling skins off reduces the storability. But in the end, I just took off the first 3 on most bulbs.
I washed off the mud as we’d had rain the night before. My helper friend joined me after I started the garlic and he cut off the roots and bound them in bunches of 8 bulbs, staggered for better air flow.
I found one tote that had a lot of bulbs damaged in digging. Usually I know when I’ve damaged one, but had no idea I ruined so many. There were well over a dozen.
The overflow went on this support. My helper friend had to leave. I’d moved the set-up twice to get out of the sun and was losing all shade in that area. So I recruited my husband to finish the root cutting and bunching and hanging as I finished the cleaning of bulbs. Then I cleaned up the mess and put everything away.
It had taken just over 7 hours start to finish and I was wiped out. I spent the hot afternoon on the couch doing a Harry Potter marathon.
More on garlic harvesting here and here.
Friday will be an easy day. I am too wiped out for more garden work in the heat. I will make the remaining plant labels for the New Herb garden, do some paperwork, and clean up in the house some.