How to Harvest Garlic

I wrote a post last fall titled ‘How to Plant Garlic‘, and if you followed those instructions, then you probably have lots of garlic in the garden, and you might want to cut the flower stalks off them. It’s hard to do because the curly stems look so cool, but you want the plant to use its energy making the biggest, most delicious garlic possible.

They call the flower stalks garlic scapes. I wish that I’d researched recipes that use them instead of just throwing them on the compost, what a waste.

I left a few of the scapes because I want the beautiful flowers. They dry easily, and last forever. Unless you loan them to your friend Trace because you think that he might want to use them in a New Year’s Eve centerpiece which will end up in the April 2014 issue of Alabama Gardener. If you do that, then they are gone forever.

Most of my garlic plants need more time before they’re ready to be harvested, but I waited a little too long to harvest this one. Do you see the one in the lower left corner that’s fallen over and looks almost dead?

I should have pulled it up sooner. It’s still a nice, big clove of garlic, but it would have a longer shelf life if I’d harvested it a little sooner.Harvest when the bottom 2 or 3 leaves are brown and the plant looks about 40% dead.

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We ate all of the 2013 crop, so the first cloves that I pick this week will go directly into the kitchen. Before I end this post, I want to show you a few pretty pictures that I took this week.

The hydrangeas and daylilies are wonderful right now.

Getting back to the garlic, in addition to showing you pictures when they bloom, I’ll do some taste tests with the different varieties and let you know the results later.