Curing Garlic

In order for Garlic to “keep” well until next year’s harvest, it has to be cured or dried prior to storing.

I have read that part of the “full” garlic flavor comes after the harvest, from the moisture draw to the head & cloves from the leaves during the curing process. Does it really? Who knows. All I know is the heads are milder on the fresh garlic I’ve pulled this season vs the stored heads from last year.

Also, once the skin has dried a bit the chances of bruising and/or rot creeping in during storage is greatly reduced.

The best way to cure? Off the ground, in a warm place but out of the sun, in circulating air, & with the heads having little if any contact with other bulbs. If you look around your home, yard & garden you can probably find a couple of spots that meet this criteria.

This year I opted to hang most of the garlic high under the porch roof of Lizzie’s house. A couple of large clumps are hanging on my back porch (one is the hardneck harvest, the other is made up of all the heads that started splitting or separating (these will be eaten first…)

(Watch your head)

Also, the first wave of shallots need similar curing. I came to the conclusion that I needed to pull all from the two side beds due to a modest number of bulbs that were succumbing to rot. For these I used plastic shelf stocking trays that had open grid bottoms (remember air circulation). The former lawn mower shed that is coming down soon got a stay of execution and is now a shallot curing station.

(I don’t think the big bag of Perlite cares….

In a couple or 3 weeks all should be ready to trim up and store/share.