2013 Garlic Harvest

I can't remember the exact amount of garlic I purchased last fall, either in terms of weight or cost, but I think it was around 12 dollars, and 6 heads. But I could be completely wrong. I tend to start in the spring with lots of notes, which then taper slowly off, and so by harvest time my note-taking is pretty minimal, with photo records being the bulk of what I can look back on. So by the time I'm planting garlic cloves in the fall, I'm really just doing what needs to be done and not really keeping records. I'll have to remedy that at some point, although this might not be the year!

The space the garlic came out of. Seems rather small now. Might need to space them out more next year, and plant a slightly larger area!

However, I planted about 90 cloves of garlic, based on how many heads I harvested. I also had 4 hard neck and one soft neck that apparently I missed during last summer's garlic harvest that sprouted up and grew this spring. So all told, 95 garlic bulbs. They aren't dry yet, so I don't have a weight (and really, we need to invest in a kitchen scale to really weigh things accurately from the garden - maybe next year!). But this amount looks like it might be enough to last until the next harvest, plus enough to replant this many in the fall. Most aren't all that big, which is why 90 sounds like a lot but really isn't! I'll save the biggest for planting, and I'll plant more than this amount - I'm thinking I'll save enough for about 120 cloves to be planted. It will take a lot of bulbs to get that many cloves though!

The forgotten ones from last summer

The drying rack

Last summer I accidentally left the garlic on the porch and not only did it get sunburnt but it also got rained on, and the cloves went off color pretty quickly. Also, my husband admitted he really didn't like the taste of our homegrown garlic compared to store bought garlic, so I bought a new variety to try growing to see if he liked it better. This summer I was very diligent about my post-harvest routine, we harvested right after sunset one evening (due to the heat wave!), and laid the garlic on the sunporch out of direct light to dry. I likely could have harvested it earlier, and likely should have, but with the baby, and with the mister working night shift, my garden time is pretty limited these days, so harvesting got put off at least a week.

Not a bad haul I'd say :) And just in time fr the first cucumbers to be ready to be pickled later this week!