Garlic Harvest #1

This afternoon I harvested the first garlic. I  noticed that most of the leaves on the "Russian Red" garlic had turned completely brown. I read last year that you should harvest when 1/2 of the leaves have turned brown. Well, I am way past that point with this variety! You will also notice that I never got around to cutting off the garlic scapes. Oh, well. Such is the theme of this year - running a bit late!

I planted this garlic on November 3rd. It was garlic that I had brought back in my suitcase from Maine and had the biggest cloves that I had ever seen of any variety. Upon my initial digging, I discovered that those big cloves made some very large bulbs. And the roots on the bulbs were well over 5" long. They were some very impressive plants.

I had planted 15 cloves back in November and all of the cloves produced a nice plant. One clove did split in two and produced two connected cloves, so I ended up harvesting 16 bulbs today. I gave each bulb a gentle cleaning with my glove and then brought them into the shop to dry. I made a temporary drying rack and laid out each plant. In a few weeks I will cut off the stalks and peal off one layer of skin. Then I will weigh each bulb and see what the "Russian Red" harvest for 2013 totaled.