Wednesday, July 15, 2009

SecretBlog: a test garlic

garlic 3

On Sunday I dug a first garlic head to see if they are ripe yet. They plants have turned yellow and brown, but are still standing. The head was bigger than I’ve ever grown and beautiful creamy white skin. 6 or 8 nice cloves. But the skin had many wrappers and wasn’t dry - the inner wrappers were thick and leathery still. So it wasn’t ready for harvest. I’ll wait a few more weeks to dig any more of them.

Garlic is ready for harvest when the leaf tops begin to dry and bend toward the ground. The presence of three to five wrapper leaves is another indication of maturity. … Irrigation should be discontinued approximately two weeks
prior to harvest. Univ Kentucky Garlic Fact Sheet

I was disappointed to find many brown spots inside the cloves, even with the perfect skins. I suppose this is mite damage. :( Hopefully the rest don’t have the same. Maybe a bad choice to grow garlic where I grew onions last year. Of course, all the irrigation probably hasn’t helped either.

garlic (Allium sativum)

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