Harvesting garlic

[cutterboy]

Today was harvest day for the garlic. Planted October 31 it came up very early this spring and grew well through the spring and summer till today. This is about 10 days earlier than normal for harvest but the plants tell us when it's time to harvest and today they told me. Now, they tell us you can't grow soft neck this far north but they don't know what they are talking about. I grow both hard neck and soft neck and do well with both. In the picture above the first row is soft neck and the back row is hard neck.

I pulled them up and washed them off with the hose and laid them out on the lawn to dry.


After a while my wife cut the roots off and tied them into bundles of six.


Then I took the bundles and tied them up in the drying barn. Garlic, lumber, kindling and mint gets dried in that barn.



My wife will use a fair amount in her cooking and we will give a lot of it away to my sons (who are both great cooks) and my wife's brother. Me, I will sit and enjoy my wife's home made pasta with her home made sauce with a glass of good Italian wine.


  I love the home made food.....Cutter

[doc henderson]

Cutter, what is the difference between the hard and soft neck?  

[Magicman]

There is much Garlic on my property.  At every tenant house location there is Garlic, Daffodils, and usually Walnut trees.

[cutterboy]

Cutter, what is the difference between the hard and soft neck? 

As far as looks and taste, almost nothing. The hard neck as the name implies has a ridged hard stem for several inches above the bulb. The soft neck has a stem that is pliable and can bend, thus the name soft neck.
The soft neck is supposed to be for southern gardens and the hard neck for northern gardens but as I have found out the soft neck grows very well in Massachusetts.
Another difference is that the hard neck grows a scape and the soft neck does not. A scape is a long sometimes curly twisty stem with a bulb like seed head at the end. The scape can be cut up and used in cooking, it has a mild garlic flavor. 

[21incher]

Mine is almost ready also. Cut the scapes last week

We find that the hard neck has a much shorter storage life. We use the hard neck first and the soft neck will stay good in the root cellar over a year. We grow a nice German hard neck that is mild and awesome roasted.  

[cutterboy]

Yes 21incher, we find the same; the soft neck keeps longer than the hard neck.

Nice picture of scapes.

[rusticretreater]

The plant does tell you when to harvest it, but usually mine are left in ground until nearly all of the plant has turned brown.  After harvest and washing, they are placed in a cool place for two weeks or so to stabilize.  Then using a traditional technique, the ends are braided and then hung for storage.

You Tube - How to braid garlic

The scapes are great in a stir fry of what else? Garden vegetables!

[aigheadish]

Looks like a great harvest Cutter! This is my first time growing garlic and I have no real idea of when to harvest, but I also didn't plant until mid-late May. Stuff I'm reading is similar to what Rustic is saying, wait until the leaves brown up good. I may gently dig one up to see what it looks like. 

[cutterboy]

aigheadish, your garlic probably won't be ready to harvest for some time yet. Mid-late May is late for planting garlic but if the plants are green and growing let them grow into fall if necessary. The best time to plant garlic is in the very late fall here, late October-early November. The plants will shoot up in the early spring and be ready to harvest late July.
Even with a late planting you should get a good crop. One year I planted in the spring and got a very nice crop but harvested in late summer.
GOOD LUCK!

[chep]

I am a retired garlic farmer! Last year was our last season.  5000 heads ! 5000 less things to think about! 15 yrs growing commercially 

This year 200 in the garden instead. Much more manageable for our Lives!!

Ironically,  this is the 1st year the dreaded leek moth has visited. We had to chop the top 1/3 of our tiny garden crop to get head of the tunneling worm... we will see what the heads look like.

On the subject if when to harvest. You want several green leaves still, these represent the # of layers of peels on your garlic. The garlic shell is critical for storage. The more shell the better protected. Also be gentle with it. I always cringed when I'd hand a couple lb bag to someone and thunk they'd drop it on the ground. Every bump and bruise will make a brown spot. Less apt to keep well. 

We just didn't have the time to spend with the garlic anymore. It was a nice cash crop, but I'll run the mill more 
Now we have a couple hundred feet of taters, grinding corn, bush beans and melons.  Decided to grow more for us instead of the garlic crowd.
@DonP for corn milling

[aigheadish]

5000 sounds like a lot! I have 12 I think, and who knows how they'll do!

[21incher]

5000 sounds like a lot! I have 12 I think, and who knows how they'll do!

The first  year is basically just for getting seed acclimated to your conditions for the following year. Properly cure and save the 6 biggest bulbs to plant late fall. Enjoy the rest. Next year it will do better.  The good thing is you only buy seed garlic once and will have garlic for life. Another fun bulb to try are shallots.  

[chep]

Cutter I'm glad you started this thread. Got ours all pulled and hung up this evening.  It's been pretty dry here, so not monster heads but acceptable,  especially since I chopped all the plants pretty hard when they showed the leek moth damage. Found 1 head that was soft I assume due to that moth

@aigheadish
12 can turn into 5000 very fast 

[thecfarm]

5000!!!!!!

[aigheadish]

I don't know if I could compete, commercially, with the guy down the road that grows and sells to all the fancy restaurants, but it may be fun to try! 

[cutterboy]

chep, I'm glad you got your garlic harvested and it looks ok. I never heard of the leek moth and apparently I've never had a problem with it.
I have an older brother in Virginia who like you raised and sold thousands of garlic every year. Three years ago he had to stop due to health reasons. He sold a lot of them at farmers markets but most of them to a guy who would buy all that he could produce. 

[cutterboy]

21incher, what you said about planting garlic cloves from your own crop is right on according to my brother.(the garlic farmer) He told me years ago to always plant from the garlic you raised yourself. It will acclimate itself to your soil and weather conditions and get better each year.
Also the garlic you buy from feed stores to plant has gotten very expensive. 

[SwampDonkey]

A wonderful site, all that harvested garlic.   I don't grow any here, just onions. I don't use a lot, mostly pickling, salmon marinade, oyster Rockefeller that sort of thing. I do love onions.