Earlier this week, I harvested my garlic crop. Last fall, I had planted it in a corner of the garden that I'd piled about four inches deep in (mostly) composted horse manure. Since garlic is a heavy feeder of nitrogen, and horse manure is pretty high in nitrogen, I was hoping that this combination would yield me a crop of decent sized garlic bulbs.
And, for the most part, it did. Almost every bulb of garlic I pulled, no matter which of the five varieties I'd planted, was as big as the individually sold heads of garlic in the grocery stores. And, of a few varieties, there were many garlic bulbs that were close to baseball sized. I am quite happy with the results of this informal experiment.
Guess how I'll be prepping my garlic beds from now on, LOL.
For the most part, every clove of garlic I had planted last fall grew and yielded a head of garlic this summer. One variety had a smaller yield, I'd say about 70%, and those were also the smallest bulbs. But of the rest, two varieties gave me 100% of what I'd planted, and two others were more than 95%.
We've had a couple of days of scattered showers since I harvest the garlic, but on the non-rainy days I've been spreading the garlic out on the front porch in the breeze and (indirect) sunshine in order to dry the necks down and cure the heads. Once the 'stems' are all dried up, I will cut off the heads and bring them into the basement to separate out the ones I want to save for this year's seed garlic (the largest heads), and store the rest for eating.
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