Garlic leaves are turning brown and it’s time to harvest. Because we weren’t here last fall to plant a crop, we are helping with the harvest of others in exchange for garlic. A mixture of soft-neck and hard-neck varieties are harvested. The stiff neck have a much fuller taste, are easier to work with and have larger cloves. The soft-neck, on the other hand, are milder and smaller, but tend to store longer. It’s a relatively low maintenance crop - the garlic was planted last October, mulched heavily with straw and now harvested. No irrigation and no weeding. We’ll be saving the largest and best looking cloves from what we were given to plant this fall. For the time being, we have bundles of garlic hanging around the house to dry and are cooking with fresh scapes and bulbils that were cut.
