We might have grown too much garlic at our house this year…or maybe not; it’s difficult to think that “too much garlic” is a real problem. Harvesting garlic is fairly simple, just pull firmly and gently on the stalks and you’ll feel the roots give way. It’s a very satisfying vegetable to harvest, actually.

Garlic should be harvested when about a third of the leaves are brown. Don’t wait until all are brown, or your garlic will be tough. Mike McGrath, on NPR’s You Bet Your Garden show recently equated garlic that was left in the ground for too long to “George Washington’s wooden teeth,” which made me laugh. I’m not sure I fully understood the metaphor, but it didn’t sound good.

Once garlic is harvested, it needs to cure for two to three weeks outside. I’ve seen instruction to cure in direct sun and other notes to cure in light shade. Too much heat might burn the cloves. I set my garlic on cooling racks in the shade to make sure air could circulate around all cloves. I left mine out for more like four weeks, but that doesn’t hurt anything, just make sure it is covered if rain starts to fall.

We’re hoping our harvest will last for a good six to eight months, and in order for garlic to store for that long, it needs to be kept in a cool, dark, dry place and in a manner that allows air to circulate evenly. Dumping the garlic in a box and calling it good will result in sprouting, rotting ick.

Soft-neck garlic varieties can be braided (I’m sure you’ve seen garlic braids) which is both functional and quite pretty. Hard-neck garlic is a different story—the stalks cannot be braided, so they must be cut off about ½” from the garlic head. Most store-bought garlic is hard-neck; it lasts longer than soft-neck, which is what grocers need.

I’ve seen tips about storing hard-neck garlic in old nylons: drop a head in one leg, tie a knot, and drop in the next, etc. That method is a great way to store the garlic and make use of a pair of old nylons, but I didn’t have any old nylons or tights, so I came up with something else.

I used tulle! In fact, I repurposed leftover wedding tulle for garlic storage. This method does require some sewing, but it in no way needs to be careful or precise (my sewing on this project would make my mother ashamed of me, but I figure it’s just garlic, so the quality of stitches and matching threads should matter…the garlic won’t know the difference).

To make tulle garlic keepers, I used about a yard and a half of tulle. Cut the piece lengthwise to make two long, skinny pieces of tulle. Fold the tulle in half length-wise, then fold the raw edges over twice, a scant ½” will do for each fold. Pin your fold and start sewing. I used a large zig-zag stitch and went over the seam twice for good measure. Trim the threads and start storing those cloves.

I tied loose knots at the bottom of the tube and between the cloves so that we can untie them as we need fresh garlic and then hopefully reuse the tubes again next year.

How do you store your garlic?
 

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