Garlic Cleaning

This morning I spent about 3 hours cleaning all of my garlic up to bag and label it.  Now I did do this while watching War Horse so that may have contributed to it taking so long.  For each of the varieties I cut all of the bulbs off of the stalks using garden pruners (scissors aren’t strong enough for hardneck garlic, they will work but so much easier with a pruner) and then cut the roots off with scissors.  At the same time I also rubbed off the outer layer off of the bulb so that they were nice and clean.  I then spread out each variety on a cardboard flat so that I could see them all and pick the ones I wanted to save for planting in the fall.  It was also so that I could see the size difference between those that I left scapes on and those that had the scapes cut off.

This is a picture of the Music that I grew in the garden.  The bulbs on the left had scapes left on them and produced bulbils, the ones on the right had the scapes removed.

The size difference really isn’t that different going through all of the varieties I grew.  I still had some large bulbs but didn’t have any that were exceptionally large.  So I would say by leaving the scape you are eliminating the possibility of getting the largest possible bulb. But any that had the scape left on were right around average with those that had the scape removed.

I weighed each variety to see what the yield was, it is as follows:

Music – 3lb 8oz

Music from Field – 2lb 8oz

Red Russian –2lb

Northern Quebec –2lb 11oz

Georgian Fire –2lb 14oz

McEwen’s Red – don't remember

Polish White – 2lb

Brown Saxon – 2lb 4oz

I didn’t record the number of heads of each that I picked, but if I was to look back to the tags I wrote out I would be able to figure it out.  There were about 25 bulbs per variety with the music and polish white having double that.

Overall I was very happy with my garlic harvest and am planning a significant increase in production next year.