With both hands, I pulled on the long tough greens and out popped the bulb of garlic from the earth. I shook off the soil and laid the garlic on the grass.
Then I did it eight more times.
Only one gave me a hard time. So I gently dug around it with my hands to help loosen it.
The instructions that Kitty gave me when she also gave me the cloves of garlic to plant last fall said to let the garlic cure in a shaded area with good air circulation.
So I got the old table without a top that I use for skirting my wool and set it up on the front porch with a piece of chicken wire wrapped around the top of it.
As I sit on the porch writing this, I can smell the garlic which is behind me.
It will be ready to eat in two to three weeks. I’ll save the biggest bulb to plant in the fall.
I also dug up some potatoes. Those plants too I pulled up with both hands. They came up dangling roots dirt and small red potatoes. Then I reached down into the earth where the plant had been and dug up more potatoes that were left in the ground.
The big dark potato was rotten, but I roasted the others and a few more for dinner. Along with them, we had sliced zucchini also from my garden and string beans from the farmer’s market.
I have a lot more potatoes and a bunch of overgrown tomato plants with lots of green tomatoes. The one zucchini plant continues to grow as does the kale.
I also harvested a basket full of nettle and mint leaves today. The nettles grow wild in the barnyard and pasture. The mint grows right out the back door scattered throughout my flower garden.
They are both drying in the upstairs bedroom/office. It’s the perfect place for drying herbs, warm without direct sunlight.
I’ll use both to make tea.
I just put the dry leaves and stems in a cup and pour boiling water over them. I let it steep then strain out the leaves. I drink the nettle tea from spring to fall to help alleviate hay fever. Sometimes I mix the mint in for extra flavor.
But I especially like to drink the mint tea on late winter days to remind me of summer.
Garlic is a wonderfully easy crop to grow! It stores well over the winter too so you could plant more cloves. I just harvested 168 bulbs! After it’s dried, I store it in a cool place in the cellar but also give it to appreciative family and friends. Of course I save the largest cloves to replant in mid-October. You can never have enough fresh garlic!
That’s a lot of bulbs Hazel. I’m impressed!