Forty-seven of our 48 garlic cloves came up this spring, and this morning, a Saturday wedged into my two weeks of teaching summer art camp, I pulled 46 of them. The forty-seventh had been sulking since June. When I eased it out, there was nothing on the end but a soft brown knob, and it went straight to the compost.
This is our first garlic. Denise, a fourth-grade teacher at my school who grows garlic in Putnam Valley, gave me eight heads of hardneck 'Music' last fall, and on October 25 I broke them into 48 cloves and planted them in half of the east bed. They spent the winter under shredded leaves, came up the gray-green of new garlic in March, and gave us a big bowl of scapes in June. Today was the main event.
How I knew it was time
Garlic doesn't announce itself the way a tomato does. The heads are underground, and digging too early or too late both cost you something. Denise's rule of thumb is to dig when about half the leaves have browned. Each leaf above ground matches a papery wrapper around the head below, so if you wait until the whole plant is brown, the outer wrappers are already breaking down and the heads don't store as well. Dig too early and the heads are small, with thin skins.
By Wednesday the lower leaves on most plants had gone the color of straw, and the top five or six were still green. After camp that afternoon I dug one test plant at the end of the row. The head was full-sized and the cloves were plump against the skin. That settled it for Saturday.
Digging, not pulling
Mateo wanted to yank them out like carrots. I made him wait while I showed him the soil knife. The stalks look sturdy, but the roots hold on hard, and if you pull from the top you can snap the stalk and leave the head in the ground, or strip off the wrappers you need for storage. So we loosened the soil a few inches out from each plant, pushed down on the knife handle to lift the soil, and then pulled gently from the base. He did the last dozen by himself and was insufferable about it.
My mistake came earlier in the week. Garlic should dry out for a week or two before harvest, and our new drip line runs through both halves of the east bed on one timer, garlic on one side and the 90 onions on the other. I meant to fold and clip the line on the garlic side at the start of July. I remembered on Monday. The soil came up damp and clumpy, and the heads needed a lot more brushing than they should have. Next year that goes on the calendar in June.
We didn't wash anything. I rubbed off the loose soil with my hands, left the roots and stalks on, and laid the plants in the shade while we worked. One head got nicked by the knife, so it's going into tonight's dinner. Into the notebook: 46 heads, one lost, one nicked.
Curing on the shady end of the porch
Fresh garlic needs a few weeks somewhere warm, dry and out of the sun, with air moving around it. Most of our porch bakes from late morning on, but one end stays shaded most of the day. Nate screwed three hooks into the beam there, and we hung the garlic in bundles of six, tied at the stalks with twine, with a box fan on low for the muggy nights.
Hanging there, the bundles look like something out of an old still life: papery white heads streaked with purple, roots like gray tassels, stalks still holding a little green. Pim has been told that they are not toys. Pim disagrees.
In three or four weeks I'll trim the roots, cut the stalks to an inch or so, and weigh the heads for the harvest log. My guess is around 9 pounds.
The ones I'm keeping
This is the part that makes garlic feel like such a good deal. You can replant your own, and over a few years it settles into your soil. Once these have cured, I'll sort them and set aside the 12 biggest heads to replant in late October. That should give me about 60 cloves, a dozen more than this year. The rest are for eating. At the supermarket's price per head, all 46 are worth less than fifty dollars, which badly undersells cutting into a clove you grew yourself.
I sent Denise a photo of the bundles. She wrote back one word: "Told you." The smell is still on my hands, and I suspect it will come with me to camp on Monday.
