Wooo Hooo…nine months after I planted my garlic, in the very cold ground (which you can read about here) we harvested it this weekend, in the blazing sun!
You’ll have to pardon my excitement, but this was our first time planting garlic and so we were kind of winging it, not really sure what to expect.
When I bought the garlic to plant back in the fall, the grower I bought them from told me three specific details
- 1) plant October the 15th
- 2) Once you plant, do not water – this may be specific to us on the West Coast since those that live here know…we get a lot of rain! If you are thinking of planting garlic somewhere that does not get a lot of rain, I would check with an expert on wether to water or not
- 3) You will know when the garlic is ready to harvest once the lower shoots start to dry.
Pretty simple, which is perfect for me, because I don’t have the patience for things that are complicated or take a lot of attention!
I love the scapes that pop up. There seems to be a couple trains of thought with these. Some recommend cutting them off a couple weeks before harvesting so all the energy goes into the garlic, or leaving them on. I left them on, mostly because life got super busy and I didn’t get around to cutting them off, the garlic is huge so it didn’t seem to effect it’s growth. I was given a recipe for scape pesto, which I am looking forward to trying.
After garlic is pulled it needs to dry for 3 – 4 weeks. Here is where I made at least one rookie mistake, I found out after I had already cut the stalks that garlic dries best with the stalks uncut….oops. I will know for next year! I will trim the roots once the garlic is dried. 
We now have a garden shed full of drying garlic. You can smell the garlic from a mile away, let’s just say no vampires will be visiting us! I planted 34 cloves of garlic back in October and ended up harvesting 31 full garlic. It would have been more except I got impatient and pulled out a few early, just to see what was happening 😉
Over all garlic was very easy to grow. I will save the biggest garlic to plant again in October and the rest….I hope my friends like garlic!
I hope you are all enjoying the weekend!
grillfusion 
Oh yes please! Who cares about garlic breath, those look awesome! Way to go.
Yay for garlic! Looks like you’re hooked up for the year!
I can’t wait for the pictures of what you’re going to cook with that glorious garlic!!!
This is just so awesome, Heather! I haven’t tried to plant my own garlic, but we do get fresh garlic from one of our local growers. There is just no comparison to the run-of-the mill garlic from the supermarket. We also really enjoy the scapes – can’t tell you what to do about the harvesting part, but I can tell you they make amazing additions to everything from spaghetti sauce to garnishing potatoes! Congratulations on a job well done!!!
Wow! They look great! What variety did you use? I tried last year with bulbs from the store, but they grew so tiny! I am going to try again this year 🙂
Thank you Teresa – I actually planted the Russian Hardneck that I bought from a local grower. I just bought my next batch to plant on the 15th of this month, so we shall see if I have the same luck this year. Good luck with your planting and crop 🙂