Harvesting garlic

I should have mentioned in last week's email about harvesting that this is the season for harvesting garlic. Those of you who took a garlic from me last spring and put some bulbs in different places have noticed that they are turning brown. That tells you it is the time to pull them.

Actually, I'm a bit tardy on this. When I pulled one this weekend, the stem was so dry it broke! This makes it challenging to hang to dry the bulb, so I'm digging the others now, which is a bit more work than pulling.

The books say you should hang the garlic from their stems in the attic to dry out the bulbs, but I have a place in the kitchen where I can hang them. When they are dry, it is easy to remove the stems and fuzziness on the bottom of the root and put them in a cupboard to use -- or separate them into bulbs and put them in different places in the garden for next year.

Pat