Cleaned Garlic

When I harvest my garlic I don't do anything other than brush off as much dirt as I can.  You don't want to wash them before they cure or they might get moldy before they finish curing.  When I hang them up to dry out, they often have very dirty outer leaves and clumps of dirt in their roots.  After they have dried for several weeks the outer leaves have formed a protective layer around the cloves inside.  Before I put them away for storage I want to clean the heads and trim them so that they will keep better.  I just trim the leafy end down to within an inch or so of the cloves and trim the roots off completely.  As I trim each head of garlic I also knock off the outer dirtiest layer of skin.  If I want my cured garlic to store for any length of time I want to minimize the amount of dirt on the bulbs.  I also weed out any damaged bulbs as I go.  Very small or partially damaged bulbs go into my use first pile.  These will be eaten as needed over the next few weeks.  The rest of the larger bulbs went into a well ventilated box for storage.  I ended up with a grand total of 13.6 pounds of garlic.

The very largest of the cloves will be planted out in the garden this fall after the first frost.  Many other cloves will be going into flavoring my dill pickles as I start to preserve cucumbers later this season.  I want to make my own garlic powder this year as well and will probably use the smaller cloves for that project.  I still plan of keeping several pounds available for fresh use too, since they will keep for many months if they are properly cured for storage.

This is the forth or fifth year of planting garlic that I have saved from previous years harvests.  I think that the varieties that I have chosen have acclimated well to their growing environment since they seem to be getting noticeably larger every year.  This year's harvest is no exception.  I had at least ten heads that were as large as my palm and only two or three that were tiny. The majority of the heads were nicely shaped heads with large, firm cloves.  A few of the soft neck varieties had small bundles of garlic "seed" bulbils a few inches up their stems.  I could plant those if I wanted to, but they would take a few years to make the good sized heads that I am already producing.  The tiny bulbils will probably get mixed in with the other garlic that will be dehydrated for powder.