The Life Cycle of a Garlic Bulb

Harvest: The Birth of Garlic Babies

At last, the birth of your garlic! After a long nine months in the soil, it’s finally time to deliver those gorgeous full-grown bulbs into the light of day.

1. Digging Up the Bulbs

When to harvest:  About 2-3 weeks after scapes are removed, the plants will dry down one leaf at a time from the bottom up. Each leaf forms one bulb wrapper. The bulb wrapper associated with dried leaves are potentially less robust, or even absent, so consider how many wrappers you want for good storage when you think about when to harvest. We like about 5-6 leaves still mostly green, because we usually lose a couple of wrappers during the curing and cleaning process. When about half the plant is still green, it’s time to harvest!

You can wait longer (we’ve had years when over half the leaves were dried), but be extra careful with the bulb skins when harvesting. If left in the ground too long, the bulbs will eventually split open leaving them full of soil and resulting in a much shorter storage life. So keep an eye on your garlic a couple of weeks after scape harvest to be sure you get them in time. If you left a scape or two attached, they will be standing up straight and pointing at the sky by harvest time.

Garlic field ready to harvest. Some varieties will be ready before others. Porcelain types are typically ready first for us.

How to:  Use a potato fork to loosen the roots and pop the bulbs free. Push the fork into the ground several inches away from the plant, being careful not to stab the bulb. Give it enough space to avoid damaging the bulb as you lift and loosen the plant.

Pull up the loosened bulb by the stalk. If necessary, rub off excess soil from the roots. Be careful not to rub off the skin on the bulb—you want those wrapper papers intact! Take care if soil is hard or compacted. You don’t want to break the stalks and have to go digging for lost bulbs. With hard soil, simply use the fork to loosen more of the soil around the bulb before pulling it.

Be gentle and treat those bulbs like an apple. Bruised or broken skin invites mold and ruins the damaged clove.

Other Methods:  Some growers remove the outer leaf in the field. If you have a small amount of garlic, you may choose to do this for cleaner bulbs. See the section on Curing below for more on cleaning bulbs.

Harvest method at Prairie Coteau Farm:  First, we mow the garlic stalks leaving about 10-12 inches. This makes drying more efficient in our drying house. (I don’t recommend cutting the stalks if you plan to make braids, or dry the bulbs by hanging them. See next section.) We use a blade pulled by the tractor to slice under the plants and cut and loosen the roots along the entire bed. We pull the garlic out by the stalk and place it on racks, ready for drying. We don’t mow garlic used for braiding and dry it briefly as a whole plant on racks before braiding while still green.

2. Curing

Once you’ve harvested your garlic, you’ll need to dry it for long-term storage.

How to:  Bundle your garlic by the stalk in groups of up to 10. Alternatively, lay the garlic plants on screens or make a wood frame covered with chicken wire (this is what we use). Hang the bundles or place the rack in a dark, dry place with good air flow, such as a garage or barn. If the air is stagnant, run a fan to keep it moving to prevent mildew on the skins. A greenhouse or hoop house covered in shade cloth works well too, which is what we use.

Using a hot loft, garage or greenhouse, will likely reduce drying time, but you must pay close attention to the temperature. Garlic will cook at 120°F. You may not see it right away, but storage life will be reduced, and garlic will eventually take on a translucent, waxy appearance.

We monitor our drying house with a thermometer app on our phones and keep temps in the proper range by opening the sides of our hoophouse, using fans and sometimes even adding additional shade cover. 

How long to dry:  Length of drying time depends a lot on where you hang your garlic, how much volume you have, and how hot it is. It can take anywhere from 3-6 weeks to fully cure your garlic.

You’ll know it’s ready when hardneck stalks have shrunk down to about the size of a thin marker. Check by clipping a stalk. Squeeze the cut end of the bulb. The stem should look pithy and dry. If you smell garlic juice, it looks wet, or juice bubbles up, it’s not fully cured.

We hung garlic successfully in barns, sheds, and lofts before setting up our current drying house. Drying garlic in locations with shifting temperature and humidity results in longer drying times and risks  black mildew growing on the skins. (Though it’s typically harmless and only a cosmetic issue.) Our new setup allows for quicker, more even drying at higher, more consistent temps and humidity.