For people who want to grow more food with less work. đ± This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribersâhere's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."
how to tell when your garlic is ready to harvest đ§
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I won't lie, it takes a lot of patience to grow garlic. We're more than seven months post-planting and that garlic crop is looking reeaaaally good right about now (if it didn't get affected by garlic rust, that is). The stems are stiff and upright, the leaves are green and full, and it seems like all those bulbs should be ready to pick, right? Not quite yet! For most peopleâand depending on the type of garlic grownâharvest time could still be a few weeks away. But unlike its allium cousin (the onion), garlic doesn't start to surface from the soil when it's ready. It stays where it's at underground and if you never harvest it, it simply dies back and regrows the following seasonâyes, garlic is a perennial vegetable! (And I actually do keep a patch of perennial garlic in my garden for the baby garlic in spring.) So how can you tell, exactly, when you should pick your garlic? If you pick too soon, you'll get smaller cloves that don't store well. Pick too late and the cloves will burst out of their protective outer skins, leaving them vulnerable to rotting (and even a worse chance of storing for long). Rather than constantly digging up a bulb to check for size over the next few weeks, there's an easier way to tell when your garlic crop is ready for harvest: just look at the leaves. P.S. If you have trouble knowing when your garlic is ready to harvest, here's a foolproof way to tellâwithout digging up your bulbs every week. P.P.S. The project that completely consumed the last 16 months of my lifeâmy newest book, The Route 66 Cookbookâis now available for preorder! You can preview it here.â |
Garden Betty
For people who want to grow more food with less work. đ± This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribersâhere's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."