The day finally arrived – garlic was harvested this morning. Today is also super hot, so we quick harvested and then fast prepped the bed so we can plant carrots tomorrow morning before it rains. In 90 minutes we’d harvested the garlic and done all the prep. Here is a bit of how.
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We grow Cortland onions from seed. They get sown indoors in February, and it’s nice to have something growing that early, a harbinger of the season to come.
Onions did well this year!
As noted in an earlier Facebook post, we’re getting rain daily. That’s great for growing lawn and carrots and other items, but not great for drying onions outdoors. After the onions “flop,” or bend over at the stem, they’re ready to harvest within the next few days. Onions that have sent up a flower stalk should also be harvested, and they’re the ones that should be eaten first as they won’t keep well.
Rain throws a bit of a wrench into the harvesting schedule though.
Believe it or not, now is the time to consider next year’s garlic because:
A year’s worth of garlic.
There are a gazillion posts about when and how to harvest garlic all over the interwebs. They’re all variations on the same theme and they’re all generally accurate, but I want to add a bit of perspective for the typical home gardener growing a few head of garlic rather than a field of them. Continue reading
Early morning harvest
Last year the garlic had nematode issues. So after eight years of using our own garlic for both eating and sowing next year’s crop, we bought new heads from two highly regarded, reputable growers in the northeast with high hopes and dreams of big heads of stinking rose.
Our dreams weren’t dashed, but they didn’t turn out as planned. Continue reading
By this time in the season many people have pulled out their ball jars, boiled their lids and are well on their way to filling their pantry with home preserved goods.
We’re not doing any of that, and that’s by design.
“You can’t always get what you want.”
For eight years I’ve been growing all my own garlic, for consumption and “seed” garlic to grow the next year’s crop. Garlic is, as I’ve said previously, one of the easiest and enjoyable crops to grow.
Unfortunately, something went wrong this year.
My garlic is usually done before others on my area, but I always chalk it up to varieties(I grow German and Music varieties) and the oddities of micro climates.
This year it was done, as exhibited by leaves browning, significantly earlier than others around me, and the results weren’t pretty.
The heads were either already splitting (typically a sign they’ve been left in the ground too long) or significantly smaller than usual.
Why? I don’t know, but even experienced farmers have crop failures, and not spending a penny on garlic for eight years seems a pretty good run, to me. A bummer for sure, but certainly not a tragedy. (Garlic I grow at several other locations seems be just fine. Still, I’m not seeing any evidence to suggest insect or disease as the cause in my home garden.)
Soon I’ll buy enough new seed garlic, enough to continue growing 180 plants, and hoping that they’ll last a good long time – at least another eight years.
(Here is how I grow garlic.)
That’s good eats!
I love garlic. It is one of the easiest crops to grow, it keeps all year (if you grow the right varieties) and early summer it produces a “scape,” a delicious and fleeting delicacy.
Before I go any further, there is one thing I want to make very clear: Garlic scapes are not “ramps,” no matter how insistent and sincere you may be when telling me so. They are two very different things. We good? Excellent. Let’s continue. Continue reading
After clearing the bed, add lime (if necessary) and some slow-release nitrogen.
Garlic is one of the greatest crops to grow because it requires so little effort, and the results are delicious.
Don’t be frightened by the number of bullet items below – the whole process takes me 45 minutes, including planting 160 garlic. Continue reading