Three weeks later they seemed dried enough to do a final processing step. I cut the leaves off to about a half inch from the top of the bulb and trim the roots back to the base of the bulb. I peel off any dirty layers of skin that I see trying to be careful to leave at least one covering the cloves to help preserve them better.
This is just the beginning of the cleaning process. The bottom layer contains the largest bulbs which I will be saving to plant for next years garden. Some of the bulbs are so big that they easily fill the palm of my hand.
This is this years harvest all bagged up for storage. I saved old onion bags just for that purpose because they allow air to circulate and help to keep the garlic fresher longer. The picture may not look like much but the total harvest of approximately 160 heads of garlic weighed in at over 17 pounds. Some of the heads are fairly small and will be made into garlic powder at some point in the next few weeks. The healthy looking midsized ones will be stored in the back closet to be used as needed until next years harvest is ready. I don't think I will be using store bought garlic for a very long time if these bulbs keep well.
Nice job on the garlic. 160 heads/17 pounds is a LOT of garlic. What varieties did you grow?
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew what kind they were. I bought the seed garlic at last years farmers market and I just picked out the largest bulbs I could find. The smaller bulbs were from garlic I saved from the previous years harvest. Some of them have purple striped skins, but most of them were white. I think that I have both stiff neck and soft neck varieties, but next year I will probably be sticking to the soft neck variety since they produced better bulbs.
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