Topic: All strung up

[Tee Gee]

Managed to get another job out of the way yesterday afternoon as you can see here;

The Garlic & Onions;



Japanese Onions;



Garlic;

[allaboutliverpool]

Beautiful job.

Mine are drying in the shed awaiting my return from France.

It is a most satisfying way of filling in a bit of time in the sunshine.

[manicscousers]

great looking onions and garlic..how did you string the garlic, we manage to do the onions but the garlic have hard necks  ???

[tim]

Trouble is, I just hate breaking into a string!!

[allaboutliverpool]

You cannot string hard-neck garlic.

My solution 2 years ago was to put them in a pint glass, stalks down.

They lasted all winter.

[tim]

Glass of........??

[Sparkly]

They look great! All my japanese onions and shallots are drying in the garage and over the next few weeks I am planning to string them up.

[Tee Gee]

how did you string the garlic, we manage to do the onions but the garlic have hard necks

Same way as the onions!!

I know what you mean re-hard neck varieties but the way I do it works with these as well.

My Method.

Suspend the main cord from a nail and tie an onion/garlic to the other end to keep the cord taut.

Then this is when I cheat a little ::) I don't pleat them as many people do.

I tie a thumb knot around the neck of the onion/garlic then tie this onto the vertical main cord - I use raffia for this but soft string would do equally as well.

The beauty of this system is I can cut off individual bulbs as necessary without disturbing the rest.

Leave the bottom one to the last as this is the one that holds the rest and prevents them sliding off the end of the string.

I find with hard necked varieties if I leave the stem around three inches long and tie them horizontally they tend to remain in place as the weight of the ones above keep them in this position.

Not rocket science but 'needs must' I tried various things in the past until I came up with this method.

I have tried the pleating method and simply got tied in knots plus when I came to  remove a bulb/s I tended to get more than one hence my experiments.

[cornykev]

TG I see you have peeled off the brown skins from the onions does is this to make them dry out quicker.   ???    ;D ;D ;D

[Tee Gee]

I see you have peeled off the brown skins from the onions does is this to make them dry out quicker.

Known as 'dressing'

These are Japanese onions as opposed to maincrop onions and they don't tend to ripen like maincrop onions do.

They don't always have the flaky husks that maincrop varieties do, so all that I have removed is skins that might be holding excessive moisture which is a potential botrytis risk during storage.

Plus the fact Japanese onions do not store as well as maincrop onions and are generally accepted as being a 'catch crop' to be used until the maincrop is ready.

So basically I suppose it could be said they dry out quicker by doing this although I generally store them upside down for a while to cater for this, and before dressing them as can be seen here;

[Emagggie]

Wish I had garlic to string together  :'(  Serves me right for using stuff I found in my shed rather than decent stuff.
Lovely job TeeGee.

[star]

Yes lovely TG. Mine look incredibly pathetic compared to yours. Firstly they are ping pong ball size and smaller, secondly,if I strung them together they would look more like a french knot than a stunning string of garlic :-\ :'(

[grawrc]

Stringing hardneck garlic? I soak the stems until they are supple and then plait.http://www.bloomingfieldsfarm.com/garbrdhow.html

[Robert_Brenchley]

I leave hardneck stems intact, and just tie them together in bunches.

[Chris Graham]

They are a great size! 

Mine are doing okay, going to lift them in August along with the garlic.

[cornykev]

Cheers for that TG.  ;D ;D ;D

[mc55]

 ??? erm, how do I tell if mine are hard neck or soft neck ?  I've got Cristo & Germidor.  They were both planted in October and look ready to harvest imminently.

[grawrc]

I'm pretty sure Cristo is softneck. Don't  know the other one.

Oh and there's a clue on the names. Softneck tend to be relatively flexible in the neck.