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Old 29-06-2015, 03:55 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible
songbird[_2_] songbird[_2_] is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jun 2010
Posts: 3,072
Default First garlic harvest

barbie gee wrote:
Terry Coombs wrote:

Well , I got some now , how do I prep it for storage and store it ? Cool
dry place , I figure , but I'm not sure how to dry it for storage .


How did you know when they were ready for harvesting?


usually i try to get mine out of the ground
before all the leaves are brown. we have pretty
heavy clay soil which sticks to everything so
the longer the garlic is left in the ground
the more likely a rain will come along and make
it harder to harvest and clean up.


This spring, I had some sprouting garlic cloves that I popped into a
planter, and now the greens are about a foot long, and getting thick at
the base. Do I just occasionally cut some greens off, but wait til fall,
or what?


you can eat the green leaves like chives, but
that does limit how big the head of garlic will
be if you cut off too many leaves. the green garlic
(forming bulb, stem, leaves and scapes) are all
edible, they don't start getting tough until the
leaves start dying back or the scapes open up and
start to dry out.

i suspect that growing the garlic in a small
planter and cutting the leaves off will end up
giving you a pretty small head of garlic with tiny
cloves.

i purposely grow green garlic to use like green
onions (burying the cloves a few inches deeper than
normal) because it grows very easily here as compared
to green onions. i use it any time after it starts
growing up until the scapes and leaves start drying
out.


songbird