The Garlic Harvest - Part 2!

This afternoon I harvested my "Silver Rose" & "Nootka Rose" garlic. But before I began that, I trimmed and cleaned the bulbs of "Chesnook Red" that I had dug on July 7th and have had curing in the shop. After they were ready for long-term storage I placed them in these neat onion bags that I found at Territorial Seed Company and hung the bag in the unheated garden room off of the shop. "Chesnook Red" is a hard-neck variety which means it isn't a great keeper. I will try to use this variety first, saving the biggest bulb to plant in October for next year's crop.

Here is my row of "Nootka Rose" garlic before I dug. As you can see, this variety sent up two shoots from most of the cloves that I planted. The end result was a medium size dominate bulb with a smaller offspring bulb connected to it.

Here is my section of "Silver Rose" garlic.  In contrast, each clove of this variety grew one single large bulb. I could tell that they were going to be big even before digging by the large size of their stalks.

Here are the "Silver Rose" plants laid out on wire to cure for a couple of weeks. As you can see, the bulb are big but also quite oval in shape. They were not perfectly round like the "Chesnook Red" bulbs.

And here are the "Nootka Rose" bulbs. With the cloves splitting, I don't have many large bulbs, but I sure do have a lot of bulbs.

Here is my "Chernook Red" harvest, cleaned and trimmed. Nine bulbs produced from the eight bulbs that were planted. The largest bulb harvested was 3.0 oz and the smallest was 1.3 oz. My total harvest weighted in at 1 lbs. 3.9 oz. Since this is the first year that I have ever grown garlic, I am very pleased with the results of my first harvest.