Friday, July 22, 2011

Braiding Garlic for Long-Term Storage

This year's garlic has been harvested, cleaned, and braided. The braid is now hanging in the cutout between kitchen and living room, where the warm and gentle air circulation is perfect for curing the bulbs so they'll keep in my pantry throughout the coming year. This year, from a patch 2.5 x 4 feet, I ended up with a 2.5 foot braid, just short of 5 pounds, of 40 nice-sized garlic bulbs (plus a few more too small or with necks too weak to braid, and a couple of the biggest, nicest ones set aside to plant in October).

For more about the whole process, check out today's post on the SGF Co-op blog. While this braid cures, I'll be using up the twelve bulbs from last year, still in fine shape hanging in the pantry, for summer cooking, canning and pickling. For the two of us, a bulb a week throughout the year is just about right.

1 comment:

Annodear said...

It's beautiful! And so clever, knowing how much your household uses in one year and planting that much.... pretty cool. :-)