Harvesting Garlic

Immediately following our 5 inch rain the other day, I started pulling up the garlic that I have planted on a wide row.  They were ready to be pulled as the bottom leaves had started to die back and with all of the rain, I certainly didn't want them rotting in the ground.  I planted about 100 cloves back in October of 2013 and mulched them heavily to discourage weed growth.  Here is a shot of a water-logged row of garlic after I had pulled 1/3 of them up.

After I pull them, I lay them in the hay on the row to let the sun dry them out somewhat.  I space them out a little so that the air can move around them and begin the drying process.

Beginning the drying process

The next day I roll them all over so that the other side can begin drying as well.  The skins of the garlic on the sunny side are already feeling 'papery' and that is a good sign that the sun is doing its job.

Flipped them over

I've read that you don't want to leave them out in the sun long as the garlic will get sunburned.  This is by far our best year for garlic production, with most of the bulbs being plump with many cloves in them.  Last year many of them only made garlic 'onions' that never separated.  They tasted fine, but weren't the traditional looking garlic.

Nice sized garlic

For my first batch, I brought in 45 heads of garlic.  It was too hot and humid to leave them outside.

In some locales, you can braid them and hang them to dry outside.  Not here.  I've learned from experience that it is far to humid to do that in South Louisiana.  In years past, I lost most of the garlic I harvested as it simply got soft and rotted after I harvested them.  Not good.

For this first batch, I cut off the tops and put them in our food warmer to speed up the drying process.  Here they are drying.  We also started eating some right away.

While this process works to dry them somewhat, many of these got soft and Tricia had to open them up and separate the cloves to salvage them and dry them.

The better option, and the one we had better success with was to bring them in and leave all the leaves on and let them cure inside.  We still check them and some did get a little soft, but for the most part they are curing nicely.  I'll just leave them there for a couple of months drying and we'll use them as we need them.

Last year I laid a box fan on its side where it was blowing air upward and laid the bulbs on top where the airflow would dry them.  I left it like this for a couple of weeks.  I think this would work in other climates to dry the garlic, but not here.  I was essentially blowing hot, wet air over the garlic and it never dried.  I ended up losing a good number of them.  I'm thinking that I should have left them outside with the fan blowing for a couple of months.  Perhaps I didn't dry them long enough with the fan blowing.  For the time being, inside is the better option for drying garlic, but I'll continue to try to learn new techniques for drying as we LOVE garlic!