Garlic Harvest 2011

We began lifting the garlic out of the ground on July 16th and finished on the 18th. This season the weather could not have been more perfect. All three days were some of the coolest temperatures of July. As always we placed the garlic in our barn's loft and use commercial size fans to begin the curing process. We began cleaning the garlic on the 23th and finished on the 25th, some of the hottest days of July. But working in the barn on those hot days with the fans going was quite pleasant. The turkey poults are still in the orchard and each of the days we pulled garlic I was surrounded by the poults and their mothers for the entire day, some times I would look up and the poults were no more than 15 ft away eating weed seeds or bugs or both. This years crop of galric looks very good with some real nice size Music and German White garlic. The image is some of the Music garlic crop.

Garlic harvest begins

We have begun to pull this season's garlic crop. We are about half way complete and expect to finish this weekend. Half the crop is in the barn's loft on our wire curing racks. This time of the year the barn has a wonderful garlic aroma. The image is of the first step in the curing process. In a couple of weeks we will clean the garlic with brushes that will remove layers of garlic wrapping (paper). We will also trim the roots of the garlic. We have been successful in keeping garlic until February and March by following these curing steps. It looks like a really nice corp of China Rose, German Porcelain, Music and Bogatyr garlic.