garlics!

The small Garlics I dug up two weeks ago and left hanging in my mudroom, their stalks/leaves are finally all yellowed and brittle. Today I took them down to brush the loose, dry soil off and see how they fared. A few were too soft and damp- obviously they didn't cure. Tossed those. Some when I brushed the dirt off, the head fell apart, so I peeled those to go in the fridge jar and use soon. (A lot of them were teensy little cloves! you can see here where they fell down to the bottom of the jar).

So of those I only ended up with four small heads that were dry enough to keep well. I've put them up in the hanging mesh basket to wait their cooking time.

 Last week I noticed that some of my big Garlic plants were falling over.

That's a good sign they're ready to harvest. I looked up the weather, and waited for the end of a dry spell- I think part of the reason some of mine didn't cure properly last year was I dug them up without noting if they'd stayed dry in the ground long enough.

Tomorrow we might get rain again, so today I dug them up! From the side with the raised bed, where I planted garlics last fall, I got eight nice big ones. They look so lovely! and already nearly dry from being days without watering or rain.

From the other side of the garden, where I impulsively planted cloves last summer against the fence, I dug up five nice fat ones and a bunch of small bulbs (some with those strange extra cloves growing a bit up the stem).

Temporarily they're all laying out now on the slats of our lawn chairs, in the shade. I'm going to hang them in my shed to cure this year. I didn't get nearly as many garlics as last year, but that's okay because we still have plenty of last year's hanging in the kitchen! I think I did the same with mulching, composting and watering- what made this year's harvest better was that I only had planted the largest cloves, and let them dry out a week in the ground before digging them up.

The three I planted a bit late from sprouting cloves, are the only ones left in the garden now. I'll probably dig them up at the end of summer, hopefully it won't be too damp.