Early Italian Purple Garlic Harvest, 2011

 I am so excited! This weekend I was able to harvest my garlic and it looks like it did very well. I had never planted a lot of garlic and I had never planted an early soft neck variety.

I waited until about 40-50% of the tops had turned golden and had all started to lay over. It seems that maybe the instant summer we experienced may have hurried along this process. I was pleasantly surprised with how well the garlic grew.











I knocked off the excess dirt and laid all of the garlic on plastic gardening trays with the vented bottoms. Now the garlic will dry for about 2-3 weeks. Once the garlic is dry, I am going to try my hand at braiding garlic. (I'll keep you posted on my progress!)

I think now I want to try a fall planted variety and just see what happens. For the moment, we definitely have enough garlic to last until our next harvest. (and we eat a lot of garlic . . . )