Garlic Harvest.

This year's garlic harvest, featuring the smallest bulbs we have ever had! I was anticipating our largest bulbs ever for this years harvest, then the greens never reached the heights of last years and I knew what that was going to mean. I'm really not sure what happened, everything was basically the same. One difference was I used dried eel grass instead of straw for a mulch,  although I doubt that would negatively affect the harvest. The bed I planted it in had been amended in the spring with a lot of manure, so I didn't add much organic matter to the bed, although I did add a sufficient amount. I'm going to file this in the better luck next year category and be thankful that the garlic that we got, although smaller than expected is plentiful! It may not last us as long as last year, but we'll enjoy it when we have it anyway. 

You'll notice that I left the dirt on my drying garlic when usually you clean the dirt off before drying, this is for a reason. We have a heavy clay soil here and even after adding large amounts of compost and manure, it still behaves as a clay soil for now.  If I tried to clean the heavy clay off the bulbs prior to drying I would risk removing the delicate, papery outer layer. Much easier to allow the bulbs to dry and then brush the soil off after the papery layer has cured, you just need to make sure you dry the bulbs quickly or the remaining dirt can cause mold and rotten spots.