Topic: garlic harvest time

[saddad]

Rust, raised red pustules on the leaves very conspicuous... you'd see it if you have it. Take the outer leaves off at eating time... rest are fine.  :)

[mummybunny]

Thanks saddad just had a look no sign of rust, might dig one up in a moe :) Just to see  :P so excited was the first thing i planted ever lol

[mummybunny]

Just dug one up what am i looking for to to tell me its healthy? Its very big smells lovley what do i do with it now do i dry it out?

[tim]

Mummy - do what the Garlic Farm advises.
Yellow tips are usually a sign of sickness.
Whole leaves are different - & don't wait too long or the bulbs won't dry out fully.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Generally speaking, you get a ring of worthwhile cloves & an inner ring of wimps - not worh the space of good bulbs. So they're packed in close for green garlic.

I plant the biggest cloves out of the crop and eat everything else. The bulbs don't look quite so good with a couple of cloves taken out of them but they taste the same, and it gives me a better crop the following year.

[Sparkly]

Have dug one bed of ours up (purple wight). Very happy with the crop. They are a decent size and no signs of white rot. Had a little rust, but am not too worried about that. We have 2 beds of garlic left. One is solent wight, which looks really good. The other is alberian something. That looks a bit weedy with thinner stems. I should have been clearer with the yellow.It isn't just the tips. Having had a better look today it is more a few yellow leaves with some greener leaves left.  We did have yellowing tips a month or so ago. We gave them a seaweed feed and they bucked up.

[shirlton]

Ours are still green as can be

[Robert_Brenchley]

Is that Albigensian Wight? It'll be ready a bit later. I got in a mess last year and mixed up the Albigensian and Purple Wights. I've lifted some of each as a result, but the bulbs are OK.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Mine have gone yellow and flopped over, but they are the thickness of knitting needles!

What size were the original cloves? The first time I tried to grow it, I had miserable little bulbs from Homebase which produced results like that.

[Sparkly]

Is that Albigensian Wight? It'll be ready a bit later. I got in a mess last year and mixed up the Albigensian and Purple Wights. I've lifted some of each as a result, but the bulbs are OK.

That is the one. I will leave them in then  ;D

[tim]

That's the one I lifted.

[anemone]

I pulled one of mine up today. It had no skin on it - does this mean they're all too wet and need lifting??

[nilly71]

I had to pull all mine up yesterday :(, most were a nice size and some were small. One of my plot neighbours said i had rust and should pull them up before it spreads...so i did... then as i was walking back to the car another neighbour said i could of left them in ???

Would rust spread to other crops?

Neil

p.s thanks for the info Tim

[tim]

I see that thegarlicfarm no longer has full advice on cultivation, so read between the lines of net searches - ie:

When do you harvest garlic?
The easiest way to know when to harvest garlic is simply to look at the leaves. When the leaves are 1/3 brown, you will need to start testing the bulbs to see if they are the proper size. This is easy to do. Simply loosen the dirt above one or two garlic bulbs and get an idea of their size while still keeping them in the ground. If they look large enough, then your ready to make your garden garlic harvest. If they are still too small, than your garlic will need to grow a bit more.

You don’t want to wait too long though. Once the leaves get to be 1/2 - 2/3 brown, you should harvest the garlic regardless of size. Putting off harvesting garlic until after the leaves are completely brown will only result in a inedible bulb.

Your garden garlic harvest will normally happen some time in July or August, if you are in a climate that is ideal for garlic growth. In warmer climates, you can expect to be harvesting garlic as early as spring, though only certain garlic varieties will perform well in warm climates.

How to harvest garlic
Now that you know when to harvest garlic, you need to know how to harvest garlic. While it may seem like harvesting garlic is just a matter of digging the bulbs out of the ground, there are a few things to keep in mind.


Dig, don’t pull. When you harvesting garlic, you need to dig it out of the ground. If you try to pull it out, you will only break the leaves off.

Be gentle. Freshly dug garlic bulbs will bruise easily and it is easy to accidentally slice a bulb open while digging if you are not careful. When harvesting garlic, lift each bulb individually from the ground. Place it in a container where it will not get jostled too much.

Get the garlic out of the sun as soon as possible. Garlic will blanch and burn in the sun. Put the freshly dug bulbs in a dark, dry place as soon as possible.

Problems will occur mainly in wet summers - the leaves may only have started to turn yellow but if the garlic is left in wet ground at this stage, the bulbs will very quickly become diseased. For this reason a second method is needed to determine what stage they have reached. If the weather is wet in early August, pull up one bulb and see how many sheaths (very thin papery layers around the bulb) you can peel off the bulb - if there are only three, harvest the bulbs, if there are four or more, wait another two weeks or until most of the leaves have turned brown.

[lewic]

What size were the original cloves?

They were fairly big, came from an organic food shop and were chitting well when I planted them (in nov).

I think I'll try a garden centre next time!

[1066]

Tim thanks for the info, I'd checked out the garlic farms website and there wasn't the greatest amount of info.

I followed BarridaleNick's tip,

I always look and feel the stems - when they start to lose the firmness it's a sure sign they are forming nice bulbs. 

and when you feel the stems (??) you can definitely tell the difference and this really helped me decide to pull my early purples, the rest I'm keeping my beady eye on  :D

[Robert_Brenchley]

There's no need to lift it early because of rust. Two years ago my Solent Wight bed was devastated by it to the point where all the foliage died. I still got a crop. The usual few spots do no harm whatsoever.

[Bjerreby]

Danish Islands

I planted 3 batches late last October. I don't know what sort they are because I just used bulbs from the co-op.

I have just dug up 2 batches with fine results. The only bad one was the one I stabbed with my garden fork digging it up.  :-[ One batch has had yellow leaf tips for several weeks, and had grown a long central stem, on which they tried to grow a small bulb, like tree onions do.

The second batch behaved differently. No flower stems, and the main stems went completely soft and the plants fell over last week. I have dug them up and the harvest is good.

The third batch also has yellow leaves and flower stems (what I cut off), but the bulbs can still gorw a bit, so I've left them in for a while yet.

[tim]

Rotten ones - any sign of white mould??

The ones you're holding - I would say that they are unripe & would grow more.

E&OE!

[Robert_Brenchley]

Snap off the central flower stalks and you'll get slightly bigger bulbs.