Oh baby

The thing about garlic is, you only get 1 chance each year to get it right. I'm definitely still learning about how to grow it. Garlic is a pretty low-maintenance crop when it's in the ground, but the timing for planting, de-scaping & harvesting are rather critical if one wants to get a good yield, and curing can be finicky too.

Last year we waited too long to bring it in so a lot of the bulbs rotted in the ground. THEN the weather was wet like crazy so more rotted while curing in the greenhouse. This year I'm hoping we hit the right window for harvesting. We took it all in yesterday in one fell swoop since most of the lower leaves had died back. It would've been better for the soil to have dried out for longer, but we didn't want to chance leaving it through last night's rainstorm.

We used a digging fork to loosen the bulbs, then pulled them up and shook off as much dirt as we could without peeling off the outer layer of paper. Here they are being hauled off the field towards the greenhouse.

And laid out on the greenhouse tables to cure:

They're pretty dirty, but I think they're gorgous!