First batch of garlic is cured/dried

This weekend marked one week that our garlic had been curing/drying on top of the fan contraption that I had set up in the garage.  I checked one clove and it looked like it was just like those that you purchase in the produce section, so I brought them all inside and placed them in the basket that we normally store our garlic.

I'll continue to keep an eye on them to ensure that they are fully dried.  I'd hate to get them to this point and lose them.  If worse comes to worse, I can put them back on the fan.


The finished product - I HOPE!

Meanwhile, I had the remainder of the garlic crop to harvest and put on the fan to start drying.  In normal environments, from what I read, people harvest their garlic and tie them up from the rafters in a barn to dry. You can even braid them together like you may have seen hanging in Italian kitchens.  That looks pretty neat.  With our high humidity in South Louisiana, it just doesn't work or I haven't figured out a way to make it work.  We're in the time of year where most any afternoon you'll hear a rumbling of thunder and it'll rain.  Then the sun comes right back out and the air is so moist and steamy that you'll swear you were in a sauna.

That type weather doesn't bode well for garlic and as I've learned from two prior experiments, garlic will rot while hanging from your rafters.  So I have a new plan and so far it is working.  I dig up the garlic, lay it out to dry for a day and then cut the tops off, leaving about 4 inches of the stem on and then put them on top of a fan that blows air around them constantly.  After about a week, the 'wrapper' of the garlic is crinkly and dry like parchment paper and the garage smells like garlic.  I guess it could smell worse?


Initial drying of the remainder of the garlic I harvested on Saturday

If you didn't read the initial post (last week, I think?), you can go back and see how I place the garlic on the fan to dry.  With the wet weather we've had the past couple of weeks, one or two garlic plants that I dug up were showing signs of rotting in the ground.  If those are the only ones I lose, I'll be happy.  In all, we should have about 100 heads of garlic - that equals a lot of Altoids or breath mints!


Garlic takes a long time to grow.  You plant them in October by separating a head of garlic into individual cloves.  Each one will begin a new plant.  Harvest is the following July or August or whenever the leaves start to brown and die back.  Many of the leaves on our garlic plant had turned brown.  We could've probably left them in the ground for another couple of weeks, but I was growing concerned about the moisture in the soil causing them to rot.  You've got to have favorable weather and patience to grow garlic - two items in short supply around our house!!


The initial drying process

Maybe I'll post when we roast some garlic with some olive oil drizzled on top.  I can't wait to jump all over that!