It's Time to Harvest the Garlic!

It's been about a month since we harvested the garlic scapes, and ate them, and that means it's now time to harvest the actual garlic and store it until we are ready to use it!  

And of course, after planting, maintaining, and harvesting garlic from start to finish, for the first time I might add, I can only wonder why more people don't do it too!

Here's how simple it was:

We planted these hardneck garlic cloves in the fall of 2015...

And covered them with straw we cleaned out of the chicken coop for the winter...

This is what they looked like in early spring 2016 ....

Then we added mulch and waited...

When the garlic scapes were ready in June, we harvested and ate them. YUM!

And waited about another month....

Around mid July the tips of the leaves of started turning brown so it was time to harvest them!

We very carefully used a shovel to dig them out of the ground. No pulling on the stems!

They were laid out for a few hours to allow to the dirt on them to dry.

Dried dirt was brushed off and roots were cut off with scissors.

Leaves were removed from center stem so they could be more easily be braided.

I braided them the best I could - it was my first time! I think I did a pretty good job though! My husband secured them with zip ties :-)

Just an end note:
I had basically been told that braiding hardneck garlic was not possible and so I initially planned on using pantyhose to try and store it (this is what I stated in my post about planting the garlic in the fall), but I decided to try braiding it anyway.  This was my first time braiding any garlic and I have to say I am very happy with the results! They are not so much braided but more like 'twisted' together so that they all stay in place when held together with a tie. However they look braided, and whatever and however I did it, well, it worked! Now I just need to hang them in a dry, cool location until needed! We are set for the winter :-)

Here are our other posts about planting and harvesting these garlic bulbs we just harvested:

• IT'S TIME TO PLANT GARLIC!
• HARVESTING GARLIC SCAPES
• GARLIC SCAPES RECIPE (also a deviled egg recipe)

Thank you for visiting!

​If you like what you see please like and follow us! 

​Sincerely,