Garlic Harvest!

The leaves on the garlic plants were about half brown and so we decided it was time to harvest them at long last.  Garlic is an awesome crop to grow in that it requires virtually no care, in my experience, beyond watering it and removing the scapes.  But, it does take some patience.  Plant cloves in the fall, they come up in the early spring, and then they just do their thing until scape time and after that its just a blink of an eye before its harvest time.
We're letting one scape continue into flower so that we can see what it looks like.  You can see the flowering stalk in the center of this photo.  We spared it during the harvest as well so that we can let our experiment continue.
The "fancy" garlic, Persian Star, that we bought produced almost disappointingly small cloves.  They are still heads of garlic and certainly edible, but pretty small ones.
Pretty small heads of Persian Star...
Market, Persian Star, and Wholesome.
Wholesome.
Fortunately, both the other varieties made up for it.  We don't know their names as we either failed to ask or failed to write it down.  We're calling them Wholesome and Market based upon whom we purchased it from at the farmer's marker.  In any case, they were quite good sized.
Market.
Market.
All three types smell wonderfully and garlicy.  My hands smelled after harvesting and rubbing off the loose soil.  We're now letting them dry a bit before they are ready for eating and storing.  My mouth waters in anticipation.  Oh, how I adore garlic!

Comments

  1. Do you keep the green tops? Apparently they are really good pickled, I've never tried it.

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    1. I have never heard of that. Intriguing. I love making use of previously un-used plant parts, like when I learned you can make a wonderful pineapple drink from the skin and core of a pineapple! I will have to go read up on this!

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  2. I am sure I saw a recipe on a food blog. I think it was Foodie with Family. Do share the pineapple drink recipe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I will have to look into that for next year. Foodie with Family is where the raw avocado key lime pie from I posted in the end of June came from as well.

      You can find the pineapple recipe here: http://bld-in-mt.blogspot.com/2013/05/sweet-pineapple-refreshment-in-glass.html

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  3. I just harvested mine a couple of weeks ago. Things are late here this year. Mine are average size but bigger than last year. I think I read that if you fertilize them and water them when the scapes appear all the nutrients go to developing the bulb.

    I'm going to actually order some this year and not just grab some off the shelf at the co op.

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    Replies
    1. We didn't plant any last year so I am happy. I am glad to hear your bulbs are bigger than last year, too. Success!

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