Garlic in the rafters

So. Much. Garlic. I harvested one 25-foot row this week and it filled my car. The bulbs that were good candidates for curing (drying for preservation) are laying on two shelves and hanging from the rafters in the garage with 2 box fans circulating air. And we still have another 25-foot row to go!

This particular row was not any fancy variety. Just remnants from Spice World Inc. from the neighborhood grocery store. The unharvested row has 2 other varieties of garlic that I can’t wait to see how they did!

Why did we plant so much garlic? Well, in the past I haven't had great success with garlic. Rarely had cloves form, the bulbs remained tiny, wasn't able to cure for preservation, and never had enough to last us until the next harvest. This year the extra sunlight and supplemental nitrogen apparently were the keys to success!

About 20% of the garlic had "witches broom" which means all the individual cloves in a bulb sprouted before harvest. Unfortunately, those are no good for curing for long-term storage, but they can be dehydrated or preserved as minced garlic in oil. This week I trialed garlic powder (next week hope to try minced garlic in oil). It took about 36 hours in the dehydrator before completely dry. I ground it up in an old coffee grinder into a powder, and was surprised as how few garlic cloves it takes to make a 4oz jar of powder. McCormick and other spice companies are making a killing!