kdwarn

Codeberg Mastodon Feeds

Home > Gardening > Blog > Garlic Season Two Complete

Garlic Season Two Complete

July 23, 2025

vegetables, garlic | permalink

Garlic season two began with the planting of 64 cloves, saved from garlic season one. Late last year or early this year I noticed a couple had not come up, and then there were several in the past month that had wilted and I found to have rotted at the stem. That prompted me to harvest them about 10 days earlier (July 5) than I'd planned to (mid July).

Out of 64 planted, I ended up with fewer than expected - 50. That's a decent number and more than last year's 35 or so, but that's a 20% failure rate, double the previous year. I think the ones I lost in late spring and early summer were due to it being much wetter this year than last, but I'm not really sure. I did water them in mid spring when it hadn't rained for while, and I didn't do that last year. At the same time, I think the garlic that did survive has, on average, bigger cloves than last year. Maybe I'll do some reading to improve how I do things next year.

After harvesting the ones that did survive, I tied them together with twine in groups of five, and then hung them over the garden for a couple days. After that, I moved them to the shed, where I placed some hooks in the rafters and then hung them between. They dried there for 16 days, which seems to have been an adequate amount of time.

Eight of the largest heads will be saved for planting the next crop in October, leaving 42. This year I'm going to try to remember to keep track of how long they last us, with an eye towards eventually planting enough to last all year. Though I may have to research how to store them that long.

January 11, 2025. The vegetable garden. In the front of the picture is the 4'x4' raised bed with some of the garlic poking up just a couple inches, through light snow and a screen I placed over it to protect it from being dug up. (I suspect squirrels were burying something.) In the back is a larger enclosed raised bed.
March 22. Vegetable garden, now with a third raised bed opposite the bed behind the garlic. The garlic is just a few inches above the ground, now with no snow or screen. All or nearly all are up.
April 24. Vegetable garden. The garlic is about a foot tall, maybe more.
May 30. Just the garlic bed, looking nice and healthy.
July 5. Harvested garlic. It's in a pile, although tied together in bunches of 5, on the woodchips in front of the door to the fenced-in garden.
July 23. Two bunches of garlic hanging from the rafters of my shed. I had already taken down the rest of the bunches to be cleaned before I remembered to take a picture.
One garlic plant before being cleaned, lying on the plywood floor of my shed next to the bonsai tool I'll clean it with.
One garlic head with the stalk cut off but still with the roots.
One garlic head now fully cleaned - without stalk and roots, and the dirt/outer papery skin rubbed off.
Midway through cleaning. Some cleaned garlic in a woven basket on the left, garlic stalks yet to be cleaned on the right. All on the floor of my shed where I was cleaning them, while sitting on a tiny chair at the opened doors.
The cleaned garlic in a basket. It was surprisingly hefty when I picked it up. I'd guess a bit more than 3 lbs, since I later stored them in an old 3-lb potato bag, and they filled it more than the potatoes had.

Previous posts related to this:

Follow-up posts:

All Tags

fruit garlic herbaceous herbs lepidoptera milkweed observations planting log seasonal review seed collection shrubs tomatoes trees vegetables weather wildlife