How to Handle Your Garlic Harvest and Plant Next Year’s Crop
I post photos of my garlic harvest start to finish on the YBYG Facebook page every year, and it always generates lots of questions.
Joanie G writes: “My garlic never gets very large”. Adds Carol V.: “I don’t have any luck with my garlic; what am I doing wrong?”
A. Could be your timing. Depending on your location, single cloves of garlic should be planted in September (NOT October) in regions that get real winters, to allow more time for root growth before frost, which equates to bigger bulbs at harvest time. Another rule-of thumb is to plant those cloves at LEAST two months before any possibility of frost. (Consult your local State Extension Service for recommended planting times in warmer areas.)
Another possibility is poor soil. Garlic grown on flat ground will never become as large as garlic grown in raised beds containing really loose soil. Adding a lot of perlite (a natural mined mineral) to your mix of compost and screened topsoil will further lighten the soil and greatly improve drainage.
We move on to Kevin B and Lisa D., who write: “Please post your magic formula for processing your garlic.” and “Let us know what you do next.”
A. Let’s begin with the harvest. When the bottom third of your plants start turning brown (late June/early July in my garden), pick a test plant and pull it out of the ground. If it resists, water that spot, return in an hour and pull gently at the base. If it STILL resists, gently dig around the base until you can pull it out. If the stalk snaps, dig the bulb up right away.
If it looks like a big leek, it’s not ready yet. Use it to spice up your next dinner. All parts of the garlic plant are edible; if you can see it, you can eat it. Note: Some people harvest the greens for an early treat in the Spring. This won’t hurt the plant, but will result in smaller heads at harvest time.
If it has a nice fully developed paper wrapper, begin harvesting; thickest stalks first. Let the thinner stalks grow some more. Ideally, harvest over a period of a few weeks—unless you start to see wrappers that are exposing cloves, or ‘splits’ in your heads, then harvest the rest immediately. Do NOT wash or refrigerate harvested garlic!
Once harvested, garlic should be ‘cured’ or dried. Immediately after each harvest, bring the plants to a spot not in direct sun. Do NOT dry them IN the sun, as some unenlightened sources suggest; it cooks away a lot of the essential oils that make garlic garlic.
I dry mine on a screened porch under a ceiling fan, turning the bulbs every day for about a week. Otherwise, dry the bulbs on wire racks and/or point a household fan towards them.
Once dry, I cut the stalks off, leaving around four inches attached to the bulb (to keep the correct amount of moisture inside). This is also when you can gently brush the dirt off. Again, do not wash the bulbs!
Now examine your harvest and separate out the largest bulbs; you’ll use their big cloves for replanting. Then separate out any small or damaged bulbs and break them into individual cloves right away. Toss (or compost) any that have turned yellow, and dry the rest in a food dehydrator (preferably on a porch if you don’t absolutely LOVE the smell of garlic). You can chop them up into smaller pieces for faster drying.
When the dried cloves snap rather than bend, dry them for one more day and then begin grinding them up in a dedicated coffee grinder that has never been used for coffee—just garlic, dried hot peppers and the like.
Have clean, dry spice jars with shaker tops ready. (Start asking friends and family for old, outdated ones they’ll never use.) Put a few of those desiccating pouches that come packed with things like vitamins in the bottom, then fill the jars with the powder you have just freshly ground, tighten the lid, and you will have ‘put up’ the most amazing garlic powder possible. (Makes a great gift!)
Now is the time to decide what to do with the rest, because hard neck garlic (the type most people grow) does NOT store well, often sprouting as early as Thanksgiving. (No worries: plant these sprouted cloves outdoors and they’ll grow just as well as the unsprouted cloves you planted earlier.)
Hard neck varieties are the absolute best for growers who experience a cold winter; they’re much more flavorful and colorful than soft neck varieties, but do not store for long periods of time, so plan to use anything you’re not going to dry or replant in the months right after harvest.
Soft neck garlic (aka California garlic; aka white garlic) are the best choice in warm winter climes. Once harvested and cured, they can last an entire season if kept dry, cool and well ventilated. Soft necks are the ones you see braided and on display. But they lack the flavor and color of hard necks.
Warning: A brief search revealed several ‘influencers’ saying you can store garlic in the refrigerator. They are wrong; it destroys the flavor. Same goes for people who advise storing your garlic cloves in oil: Do NOT do it! The organisms that breed in the oil (including botulism) are incredibly dangerous.
