Yesterday I noticed that the garlic plants were drying down. Tonight and through the day tomorrow we are supposed to get a good bit of rain, so I decided to pull garlic.
Not too much to it. I loosened up the soil with a spade, and Nell would pull them, knock the dirt off of the roots, and piled them up. Once we had them out of the ground we spread them over a drying rack we made against the back of the breezeway, with the heads under the eves. The scapes we have not eaten yet I left on the plants. I know a lot of garlic growers cut the scapes off as soon as they appear because (and it makes sense) allowing the scapes to grow out the top reduces the size of the heads of garlic you get. Oh well. What we got looks beautiful, and there is still about 30 left to pull whose leaves had not started turning brown yet, so I left them for next week.
Beautiful ! we use old bed springs to hang them upside down to cure for 2 weeks- I also water spray the excess dirt of the bulbs immediately after plucking. Good work !