After 9 months of waiting our garlic is finally ready to harvest! I’m pleased to announce the successful unearthing of eight beautiful, nicely formed garlic bulbs.
I patiently waited for the bottom of the garlic plants to start turning brown before harvesting them. Since these plants are a “hard neck” garlic variety I was able to pull them out of the ground with my hands fairly easily. One of the bulbs was slightly damaged (a clove had over-ripened out of its papery skin) so I peeled the whole bulb and used it to make a large batch of pesto. I froze the pesto in an ice cube tray so we’ll be able to enjoy our garden’s garlic and basil several months from now.
Based on Mike McGrath’s advice, I am now “curing” our garlic in a single file row on our dining room table. The spot is air conditioned and out of direct sunlight so hopefully the garlic should be ready to store in a week or so. We use garlic pretty quickly in our household so those remaining seven bulbs should be long gone by October!
This garlic was amazingly simple to grow (just plant the cloves in October, cut the scapes in June, and unearth the bulbs in July) and we are excited to finally be enjoying our own garlic!!
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The Little GSP 
Beautiful. I grow my own too! Love Garlic!
Thanks Susan! I love it too. 🙂
Those are just lovely! Was it difficult to grow? Do you think it would grow in a balcony garden?
Katie, the garlic was really easy to grow. Here in the Northeast we probably couldn’t grow it on a balcony — since the cloves need to be planted in the Fall I think it’s probably important that they be in the “real” ground over winter (they’d freeze in an above-ground pot). I don’t know about AZ though. I guess if your winters aren’t as harsh you could give it a try!
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