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!