It is mid July now and our 4 beds garlic are ready to be harvested. Not only do we have to get the garlic pulled and curing, but the beds need to be readied for next season’s garlic. We will plant that come September. This year we are trying 3 different varieties of hard neck garlic; German red, German white and Italian red. No soft neck for us. We don’t care about being able to braid the garlic, we want the scapes.
First thing we had to do is get our canopy set up in the backyard. We learned the hard way that you need to have an extra tarp over the top. That way you don’t get so much sun damage to the canopy top. Several years ago Ron built two screen bottom beds to try growing greens on the deck. He didn’t have much luck with that project, but the beds have been perfect for garlic drying. They are showing their age now, so we will have to come up with another plan soon. And the two beds just barely hold 4 beds of garlic. When we start growing larger amounts, they will just not work.
Jo and I started by pulling the garlic out of the beds, shaking off what dirt we could. The smell was just amazing. There will be no vampires around our place for weeks to come. Each load of garlic was dropped into the wheel barrow where Ron set up with the clippers.
For the first two years, we didn’t cut the stalks off. Just laid the whole thing across the rack to cure. After attending a few more classes on garlic, Ron decided this year we could cut the stalks off when we pulled them. That made it much easier to get the garlic into the canopy. Now when it is cured, all we will have to do is trim off the beard, brush off the remaining dirt and bag the heads up.

Ron showing his skill at clipping the garlic stalks.

Another good year. Only three heads were split and had to tossed into compost bin. It will take between 2 – 4 weeks for the curing to be complete. That will depend on the weather too. During the day we will leave the canopy flaps open for the breeze to do its magic. Unless the forecast calls for rain. At least we don’t have to worry about the rabbits and deer eating our garlic. Apparently they don’t like the stuff.
All this is good practice for when we have garlic growing out in the field on Tiny House Farm. Am not sure what kind of contraption we will have out there to use for curing. Even if we only do 1/3 of our field in garlic, that is going to be a lot to deal with. Some serious planning to be done between now and then.