When to Harvest Garlic

Originally Posted on May 09, 2014

Greetings Farmers and Gardeners,

Welcome to the newsletter for early May. We've had a mixture of hot days (in the 90s) and regular days (in the mid 70s). We harvested the red onions from our trial garden, and had a nice crop. David is busy planning his tomato garden, which he plans to irrigate using a drip set-up this year.

Curing Onions

Since we harvested our onions we wanted to make sure we cured them properly for best storage results. We left them in the sun to dry for a few hours, then we trimmed the tops, leaving a few inches intact, and put them in a covered porch with good air circulation so they could cure. We made sure to keep the onions spread out so they would each get good circulation and not collect moist spots. We found this useful website from UC Davis with an overview of curing onions.

When to Harvest Garlic

While we were reading up on onions, we took a look at information about our garlic crop, and the best time to harvest it. We want to make sure the bulbs are mature before we harvest them, in the hopes that they'll store well.

According to UC Davis we should wait until the tops have fallen over and dried. Then we'll get the broadfork to loosen the soil under the garlic and pull the plants, shaking any loose soil from the roots as we go. The useful website of Boundary Garlic Farm says that garlic should be cured for about two weeks in a warm, dry location with the leaves on, after which the leaves and roots can be trimmed.

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