Getting Ready To Harvest Garlic

The garlic has been growing beautifully all spring and summer and the tips of the leaves have started to turn brown.  Many of the lower leaves have fallen off completely which means that the garlic is just about ready to harvest.  I dug one up just to check the size of the heads and it was beautiful and huge.

 

From the looks of this plant they are just about ready to harvest.  I will give them a week for the soil to dry out before I dig the rest up.

 

 

This is the garlic bed before harvesting.  I won't water it directly anymore this week, and next week when I dig them up they will go into the back room to dry out for the next six weeks or so.  Last year I dried them directly in the sun and I think that is part of the reason they went bad.  The sun is so hot out here that it partially cooked the garlic while it was curing  We also had a few tiny rainshowers, though they were under tarps for the majority of them.  By bringing them inside I won't have to worry about too much sun or rain, and I can point a fan at them to help keep the air circulating while they dry. 

 

Depending on the size of the harvest I may dehydrate the smaller bulbs for garlic powder.  The smaller bulbs don't tend to keep very well so dehydrating them will be a good way to make sure that I don't lose that part of my harvest however small it may be.  The largest bulbs will be saved for planting in next year's garden.  From the looks of the first bulb I've pulled I should have no shortage of seed garlic.  The rest is going to find it's way into our mealplan one way or another.