Published: December 11, 2024 Last Updated: December 11, 2024
How Long Does Garlicgarlic Garlic: An onion-like plant (Allium sativum) of southern Europe having a bulb that breaks up into separable cloves with a strong distinctive odor and flavor. Used as a seasoning in a variety of dishes around with world. Take To Grow
When planted in the fall, garlic takes approximately 9 months from bulb to harvest. In the United States and Canada, garlic harvesting season is from July to August in most regions. Some warmer states can begin harvesting garlic even sooner, like in early to late June.
Table of Contents
How To Know When Garlic is Ready To Harvest
Guesstimating when your garlic is ready to harvest is one way to try and figure out if your garlic is ready for harvest, but if you want to be absolutely sure, then there are 3 signs to look for, from your garlic plants.
1. Garlic Scape
This is what a garlic scape looks like. source
A few weeks before harvest, you should see a garlic scape growing from the center of your plant if you’re growing a hardneck garlic. A garlic scape is basically a long, thin stem with a flower bud at the end. If you don’t know, you have to remove these garlic scapes as soon as you see them growing, because if you don’t cut the garlic scapes all the energy that’s supposed to go to the bulb of the plant, will get robbed and put into creating a flower and seeds, instead of growing a big garlic!
Removing the garlic scape is very important, so all the energy gets put it into growing big garlic bulbs.
2. Check The Leaves
What colour are the leaves, are they green or brown and do they look like they’re dying or like they still lively and could still be putting energy into the garlic bulb.
The optimal stage for your garlic leaves, in knowing when to harvest your garlic is, when half of the leaves are yellowy or dying and half of the vegetation is still green. Because each leaf that is on a garlic plant represents a layer of skin, wrapper, that is on the outside to protect the cloves.
If you harvest your garlic when the whole plant and all the leaves are fully green, the garlic will be small, kinda like green onions. Although you could harvest them at this stage, it’s not really worth doing, unless you have plenty of garlic. If you harvest a few that are slightly green(immature) garlic, it won’t be a problem because you’ll still have enough garlic that will grow into fully developed garlic.
3. Do a Pull Test
Once you verify that close to half of the leaves on your garlic plants have died back (which is around the bottom three leaves of the plant) you can do a pull test to see how is the progress underneath the soil.
To do a pull test, here are the steps below:
Step one: You’ll want to grab a small gardenhome garden A designated area around a residential property where individuals cultivate plants, fruits, vegetables, or ornamental plants for personal use. It comprises a farming system that combines physical, social, and economic functions on the area of land around a family home, providing a sustainable source of food and other benefits for the household, extended family, and friends. shovel.
Step two: Choose a garlic plant to dig up. (Hint: the bigger and taller the plant is, the better a bulb below)
Step three: Use your garden spade to dig up the bulb, trying to leverage with your shovel underneath the bulb and pulling up with your second hand on the garlic stalk.
Step four: Check your garlic. If the garlic looks good, it means it’s time to harvest.
How Do You Harvest Garlic
When you go to harvest your garlic, you want to be careful and not break the stem or the bottom of your garlic off, by pulling them. Although, one way to harvest garlic is by yanking them at the stems, it’s not the best or recommended way to harvest your garlic, because the bottoms can break off and those garlic won’t store well.
Unfortunately, I harvest my garlic the “rough” way, which is not the right way to harvest garlic, but it’s fast.
The proper way to harvest garlic is by using a shovel, and to dig it into the soil, 2 inches away from the stalk of the garlic plant you’re going to harvest, to lift from the underneath of the garlic, and with your free hand, use it to pull gently on the garlic plant itself.
Harvesting your garlic with a shovel is the right way, and you could see why it would take a lot of time to do this for each individual garlic, which is why I don’t use this method for most of my garlic, I’ll only grab a shovel when I think a garlic will be very tough, and I need it. My soil is also very loose so the garlic comes up easily.
Only a very little of the garlic we harvest ends up breaking, in the process, so we’re fine with losing a few, if we can work a little bit faster. And if the garlic does break, it’s not like we’ll throw them away, they’ll just be the first to get eaten out.
How to Store Garlic
You’ve probably grown some decent garlic, but now you need some way to store the garlic you’ve grown. So before you go putting your garlic away in some cabinet or pantry, to stash for later, you must first cure them.
Curing Garlic
Curing is essential for garlic, in helping extend its storage life, and prevent it from spoiling or getting moldy later. Curing garlic is just, basically, allowing them to dry out of the direct sun to remove any excess moisture from the garlic, as well as dry off all the mud that is still on the outside of the garlic.
The way we cure our garlic is we tie them in bundles of 10. Then we take the bundle, that is tied in twine and with the twine we screw them onto a piece of wood that is hanging from our wood shed. The garlic is then left to cure for 2 to 3 weeks, which gives them enough time to air dry in the shade. You could also cure your garlic, on a rack that allows for airflow underneath. We’ve also cured some of our garlic on racks, and so either way will work.
After the two to three-week dry period, you can gather all your garlic, and you can finish cleaning them and putting them into the pantry. You’ll want to trim the garlic stem so that there is only an inch left on the bulb of the garlic, and you’ll want to trim the root back to near the bulb.
Store garlic in a cool, dry place. Ideal temperatures for storing garlic is 1–10C (35-55F).
If you enjoyed this article, leave us some feedback and share it with others.
