When to Harvest Garlic

 Like a lot of things in life, when to harvest garlic is indeed a personal decision, depending for the most part on your location, weather, and species. For our purposes here Hardneck varieties such as Porcelain/Music in particular in northern Michigan, we generally have used the 50/50 point in growth, when the plant shows approximately 50% of its leaves are turning brown (usually in mid to late July).

If you consider that, technically, the leaves represent the "paper" which surrounds the final head, any green leaves remaining, form post harvest "paper," and the dead leaves have for the most part disintegrated around the head. So, if you choose to wait until the entire plant is brown and dry (like we did with our first crop), you will be saddened to find you've harvested (a lot of) split heads with no outside paper and their storage life will be limited.

You can still plant them or use them but they tend to dry out much more quickly that garlic harvested when the plant is only half brown. Sometimes Mother Nature has challenges for us, as was this summer ('07) as our crop went from all green to harvest in less than two weeks. Another factor is whether to harvest soon after a lot of rain when your crop looks ready (like last year for us). That's why I said it's not just a cut and dried situation (sorry).

This year, in the few days it took to harvest, a lot of the leaves went brown too quick due to the heat and drought (but the crop looks good). Last year, we were expecting more rain in a wet two weeks, and harvested on time but with wet soil. The result was a lot of moist dirt clinging to the heads (never wash them as it increases the chance of mold). This results in slower drying and a very dirty grading process. You also can lose more final paper which can affect the storage life and appearance.

Once you have determined that the time has arrived to bring your babies in, options again raise their ugly heads. We choose to bundle and hang entire plants by the dozen, but that's because we have access to a 30x40 pole barn and lots of blowers for air circulation. On a smaller scale you can simply hang them in a dry, well ventilated site out of the sun.

Others choose to build a drier which is usually wood 1x4 or 6 frames deep enough for a single layer of cut heads (cut like store bought) bottomed with cross braces and chicken wire, then stacked on top of each other on a large wooden box with a side opening and a large window fan for air circulation. If your locale is usually quite humid in late July a drier may be a necessity. Up here near the 45th parallel hanging works well so far, plus we'd need a really big box….

The actual act of harvesting is not without choices either. We were chastised early on for just pulling them out by their stems/stalks as they may break off, we found, however that we rarely lose a plant for this reason ,so we just pull them up and bundle them. I think that the latter decision is a matter of soil composition actually. Ours is generally quite loose so they come up rather easily, if your soil is compact, you may need to use a pitchfork or shovel to dig deeper and loosen the soil below the bulbs. We ended up "forking" too many bulbs so we went back to just pulling. Don't leave the bulbs exposed to the sun for too long, as they can burn and change their quality. (see curing garlic)     

~~ Dr. Richard Chura~~

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