I'm back!
When we got home from being away I was a little bit flabbergasted (spelled that correctly RIGHT out of the gate, I'm proud to say) at the size of everything in the garden.
Over the course of a week I pretty much went from pleasant, cottage garden to the last scene in Jurassic Park where there was a distinct possibility something might come screaming out of the grass and rip your wind pipe out.
In my case that might be a gang of squash bugs.
I wandered around taking everything in, when I came to the garlic. I took one look at it and ran screaming in circles with my arms over my head, cartoon-style.
ACK!!!! ACK. ACK. ACK.
My garlic was ready to pick. Not only ready, but probably even a touch over ready. Because I planted the garlic last fall and we've had such a warm winter followed by a hot, hot summer, my garlic matured almost a month earlier than normal.
It was time to get that garlic the hell out of the dirt. Or "soil" for you snooty types.
I've been growing garlic since I was a teenager and yet ... until a couple of years ago I didn't know when to harvest it. I thought I knew when to harvest it. I was positive in fact. I was wrong. Positively wrong.
I always used to let my garlic dry out entirely before pulling it.
WRONG. That is the entirely wrong way to harvest garlic. In case you're looking for the WRONG way to harvest garlic, that's your method right there. You're welcome.
Now, if you're looking for the right way to harvest garlic, here's what you need to know.
Garlic starts to die and dry up from the bottom up. For every papery covering on the garlic head, there's a corresonding leaf on the stem. 6 leaves, 6 paper covers. You get the picture. When half of the garlic leaves are dried up the garlic is ready to be pulled.
If you wait until the garlic is completely dried out then the cloves will all dry up and pull away from the stem and fall apart. If you pull it too early the cloves will be small. Either way the garlic won't store well.
To actually pull the garlic, you need to dig it out with a shovel. You can't just pull it. Shovel, shovel, shovel ... and then pull. Like so ...
Garlic, like most vegetables, is fragile. Treat it like an egg or a banana. If it gets bruised or cut it'll rot quickly.
Once you've dug up all your bulbs, wipe the majority of dirt off of the roots then hang your garlic to dry. It needs to be in a warm area where it gets air circulating around it, but out of the direct sun.
Your garlic needs to cure like this for 2 weeks.
I've hung mine by my front door.
Because I need it to dry all around, I'll turn the bundle of garlic every few days to make sure it's properly drying on all sides. It'd be better if I hung it where it gets air circulation all around it but I like it hung by the front door. After the garlic has cured for 2 weeks, take it down and lay it out. Now you can reserve your biggest, best cloves for planting in the fall.
Put however many you want aside (1 clove will equal one head of garlic, so if you want to grow 30 heads of garlic next year, you'll need to save 30 cloves).
You can now trim the roots to ½ - 1 inch and cut off the leaves. You can take the outermost papery layer off to clean up the heads a bit. The skin underneath will be clean and white. Store in a mesh bag, or if you're feeling fancy, braid your garlic (tutorial on that coming up next week) and hang it in a room that's between 60 and 65°F for storage. Cured and stored like this, garlic will last for up to 8 months. Unless you eat it all.
Or have a real problem with Vampires.
Marcus
Thank you for adding the pictures. I've read elsewhere to pick it when 1/2 the leaves or dry, but didn't quite understand what they meant. This helped a lot.
Becki
Love your post!
Karen
Thanks Becki! :) ~ karen!
Connie Sturt
Hi Karen, I forgot to harvest my garlic for over a year. The reason being I started to keep bees in the same area and then borage seeded itself on top of them. I've got a feeling I might be able to split up the bulblets, of which there gazillions and replant. Am I right? I'd love to keep hens too, but my husband would have kittens! An English saying. It's nearly time for the bee season, so I've got to get my frames and foundation in order. Tata for now.
Karen
Hi Connie! You can indeed provided the bulbs haven't rotted and they're in good shape. You might not get as good a harvest as you would if you just start again from new stock though. ~ karen!
Raquel
Love this game
Elizabeth swindle
I have/had some heirloom garlic plants at my rental house.... My husband told the renters "take all you want" ...thinking they would do like I do and just pull some as they needed it..!!!! We went back about 3 weeks later and they had dug ALL of it up and cut all the green tops off and had put it in a plastic bag...!!!! My question is... Will any of it come back next year...????
Karen
Hi Elizabeth. Sorry bout your garlic! I'm afraid none if it will come back if they've taken it all. What you need to do is get back some of the garlic bulbs they've picked. I realize this might not be all that appealing an option, but it's the only way to get the exact same garlic back. If you don't care what type of garlic grows there you can just buy some heads and plant each clove again sometime around October. Sorry again about the bad news. ~ karen!
Laura
Hi Karen,
I just harvested my first ever planting of garlic!!! If I hadn't read several of your posts on garlic I wouldn't have known they were ready. But oh my gosh, I'm so excited to hang them up and then eat them.
I only had room for 7 garlic 'plants' this year but maybe I can make more room next year.
While I was out harvesting my garlic I noticed 4 of my heirloom tomatoes had ripened - I just ate them all. I probably have about 200 - 300 tomatoes out there. They're all as green as a watermelon... I'm hoping they will all ripen before they rot. I only get about 4 hours of sun daily in my garden.
Well, I just had to share that with you. This is really my first garden and my biggest harvest so far to date :)
Laura (and fellow Hamiltonian)
Karen
Congratulations laura! Happy to have helped with the garlic! You'll love it. ~ karen!
bonnie l
Thank you for your delightful info on harvesting garlic. It was great for a newbie. Mine is now all pulled and ill bundle it soon and hang it in the barn. Learned a lot!!!.
Karen
Excellent! Glad to have helped Bonnie. My garlic was a tiny bit of a bust this year but ... there's always next year. ~ karen!
Sharon
Thanks, Karen! If my garlic harvest isn't successful this year, at least I'll know why & I won't be discouraged from trying again this fall. :)
Sharon
Hi Karen, I just discovered your site today (yes, nearly a year after you posted this article) but lucky me! because I have a garlic question and I'm sure I came to the right place. :)
I'm relatively new to gardening, and on a Pinterest-inspired whim early this spring, I took a couple of garlic cloves and stuck them in some pots of dirt. They grew, and fast! About a month ago I replanted them outside with my other seedlings and they're still growing.
So here's my question - since I started my garlic this spring and not last fall, when will it be ready to harvest? As a side note, I have no clue if its of the hard or soft neck variety.
Thanks!!
Karen
Hi Sharon - Glad you found my site! As far as the garlic goes, it's kind of hard for me to tell if it's hard or soft neck from where I sit, but if it's growing a "scape", a long thin round shoot from the centre of it with a flowerhead (or beginnings of a flowerhead) at the end ... it's hardneck. Just follow the signs written about in this post to know when it's ready to pull up. But I'm afraid you might not get much of a garlic head. Garlic needs a period of cold while it's growing, the same way tulip bulbs or hyacinths do. Since you planted it in the spring that little garlic is all confused now. It'll be a fun experiment to see what happens, but plan on getting some good quality hardneck bulbs from a garlic provider this fall so you can see what growing garlic is *really* like. :) ~ karen!
beth
thank you! i found a thousand "how to's" on planting garlic, this is the very first on how to harvest it!
Karen
You're welcome! ~ karen
Barbie
I have been growing garlic for years as well and I never really knew all that detail....I will do it differently this year! Thanks so much for the tutorial!