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| The Trick of Knowing When to Harvest Garlic |
Your garlic cloves went within the ground last October, grew through winter and spring, and now that it’s May, they’re able to be plucked from the garden, right?
Garlic is one among those things where timing is everything, and therefore the harvest period can span from late spring through late summer, counting on the weather and therefore the sort of garlic grown.
But since the bulbs are all underground, how are you able to really tell when your garlic is ripe for the pickin’?
The short answer is: It’s beat the leaves.
But don’t be fooled by its allium cousin, the onion. When onions have stopped growing, their leaves begin wilt.
The tops will dry up and flop over, signaling the time to reap . Most onion bulbs have pushed themselves out of the soil and it’s easy to ascertain whether they’ve fully matured.
Garlic bulbs, on the opposite hand, remain below ground during development.
The trick of knowing when to reap garlic is watching what percentage leaves are left on the plant.
Each leaf above ground indicates a layer of protective paper wrapped around the bulb. A garlic plant with 10 green leaves, for instance , will have 10 layers of bulb wrappers.
While there is no standard number of leaves that garlic should have, a reliable harvest indicator is when half the leaves have died off. The leaves start to die out from rock bottom up.
When most of your crop has reached this stage (aim for a minimum of 50 to 75 percent of your crop, assuming you planted all of them at an equivalent time), stop watering for a minimum of every week and permit the soil to dry out a touch to stop rot and make harvesting easier.
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| of Knowing When to Harvest Garlic |
If the bulb looks small, pat the soil backtrack and wait a couple of days before you check again. If the bulb looks substantial, the wrappers tight, and therefore the cloves well-formed, it’s able to be pulled.
Just don’t wait until all the leaves have died back before harvesting. Without the bulb wrappers protecting the garlic head, the cloves may separate and therefore the garlic won’t store well.
Over-ripened bulbs also tend to divide and form shoots from each clove (looking sort of a Siamese twins version of garlic… but still edible, as I’ve found from experience).
At harvest , carefully loosen the soil around your bulbs and gently pull the garlic out from the bottom of its stem, at its neck. ignore any excess dirt that falls off easily, but don't wash your garlic or remove the bulb wrappers.
Washed garlic tends to accumulate extra moisture within the bulb which will cause fungal infestations. It’s also overtime and energy that simply isn’t necessary, and that i am all for efficiency within the garden!
If you propose to eat your garlic directly , use scissors to trim the leaves and roots so you'll store them neatly within the kitchen.
Garlic which will are cosmetically damaged during harvest (but are still edible) should even be eaten first, as they’ll decline in quality sooner.
If you would like to organize your garlic for long-term storage, however, keep the leaves and roots intact while you cure your crop.
Generally, Asiatic and Turban sorts of garlic mature first within the season (as early as May in some areas), while Silverskins mature last (in July or August).
There are often a six- to eight-week span between the time the earliest garlics are able to when the latest-maturing garlics are pulled from the bottom . Smaller plants will often mature before larger plants.
I once planted Ajo Rojo , a Creole garlic and Siciliano (an Artichoke garlic) in October in my Southern California garden, and both were picked about fortnight apart in late May and early June. These spring harvests are typical of warmer regions, especially for cultivars that are compatible to the climate.
Garlic Maturity Chart from Earliest to Latest
In northern climates, harvest from fall plantings typicaly occur in late July to August. In southern climates, harvest depends on the particular planting date.Your harvest period is additionally determined by the present weather and soil conditions, so albeit you grew an equivalent cultivar of garlic this season, it's going to not mature at an equivalent rate as last season.
Since there are not any hard-and-fast dates to travel by, the simplest way of knowing when to reap garlic is to start out listening to the leaves in spring.
Happy harvesting!