About The River

Friday, August 18, 2017

Harvesting Garlic


 Way back in October of 2016 we planted our garlic.
I was given garlic from a friend I met at the Farmer Market.
She told me to break the cloves off the large garlic head and plant.


 We separated our cloves. You plant one clove. And then another and then another.


 The garlic patch!


 This photo was taken in late spring. 
We have garlic!
Summer arrived and the garlic grew. It grew its flower, also known as a scape.


We harvested the scapes and made Garlic Pesto.

You have to cut the scapes off even if you are not going to use them. You do not want the flower to bloom. You want all the plants energy going into making the bulb of garlic.


We harvested our garlic the last week of July.
This is one of our largest heads that we harvested.
I harvest them by digging them up careful with a garden fork. 
I left some of the dirt on and set the the bulbs in the basement on newspaper for a few days.
After the few days, my husband hung the garlic to dry and keep in our basement. 

At the time of writing this post, August 18th 2017, the garlic is doing great. We ate our first clove of our homegrown garlic in a fresh salsa we made this week.


19 comments:

  1. This is so interesting. Grandpa used to grow onions and sell them to the local grocer, but I have never seen how garlic grows. Enjoy! And have a great weekend.

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  2. It is huge and beautiful! And now that you have taught us, I may try to plant some this fall. Does it taste any different from store bought? For sure super fresh!

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  3. P.S. Is this how you should store them? What about in a paper bag with holes?

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  4. So cool! This is exciting! Does it taste a lot better than store bought garlic?

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  5. Excellent! We eat loads of garlic - keeps the vampires away. I wonder if I just planted a clove from one in the jar downstairs, it would sprout as wonderfully as yours have done?! No kissing in your house for awhile, then... :-)

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  6. This is interesting. I would love to grow garlic. Yours is so pretty!

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  7. Nothing like homegrown garlic. I use a lot of garlic in my cooking. Love it!!!! xo Diana

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  8. Question: Why do you leave the dirt on?

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  9. So exciting to harvest your own garlic! I really need to try this again.

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  10. Wow this is so interesting. You will have some wonderful and tasty meals with home grown garlic.
    Have a great weekend.
    xoxo
    Kris

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  11. You are so smart...I think you could grow anything! We love garlic and eat a lot of it. Sometimes my hubby puts cloves on the grill when he's cooking a steak! Our house always smells so good! haha! Hugs!

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  12. Your garlic looks amazing! I didn't plant garlic until this spring, so I will probably have to wait until next spring to harvest mine. I have not planted garlic before, so I read your post with interest. How wonderful that one garlic clove grew a whole head of garlic! Enjoy eating your very own garlic!

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  13. Mmmm... garlic pesto sounds wonderful! This was such a great post, my friend. Very helpful and informative. Thanks for sharing!

    Hugs to you! P.S. -Your Brewers played our Rockies last night {{smiles}}

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  14. Your garlic looks fantastic, Carla! We use a lot of garlic here and for the past year have been buying it from a garlic farm nearby. Very expensive, but the locally grown garlic is so much better than what we find in the supermarket. Recently our local farmer's market had some and we tried it. It's pretty good and a lot more reasonably priced. I guess I should try growing our own, but I'm finding it's pretty easy just to walk to the farmer's market and buy what I want. :)

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  15. Home-grown garlic must be fabulous!

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  16. Your garlic looks amazing! No vampires are going to visit you ;-)

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  17. Now this is brilliant.
    So good to grow your own garlic, it looks (and tastes) so good.

    All the best Jan

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High Fives from Wisconsin!