in this video I'm going to give you the very best tips in order to harvest cure
and store your garlic in 2018 so stay tuned so garlic takes nine months in
which to grow and it's really important that you harvest cure and store that
garlic correctly in order to be able to enjoy it for the rest of year now there's
lots of different varieties garlic there is soft neck garlic and hardneck garlic
but what we have here is elephant garlic now how you can tell about when to
harvest your garlic is with a soft neck garlic the necks will flop over a little
bit like onions do but with a hardneck garlic like this elephant garlic here
that is still standing up on end what you're looking for is the garlic scapes
now these are the seed heads from the garlic now a lot of people cut them off
in order to make garlic scape pesto is just like I have here but what you're
looking for with the garlic scape they usually start off curled but the eventually
will come and they'll straighten right up on it that's the point when you know
your garlic needs to be harvested another telltale sign is yellowing of
the bottom leaves that is another indication that the garlic is finished
growing and it's then that you know you can harvest the garlic harvesting your
garlic or it's a case of lifting the bulbs very carefully now to do this we
will utilize
either a small fork a small hand trowel or even a larger fork and we literally
put the Spade or fork or trowel whatever just below the garlic and we're lifting
at the same time we don't want the pull now as you can see here that is a lovely
bulb of garlic so we need to continue harvesting our garlic that's what we're
going to do now but I'm going to use a bigger fork in which to do that and we
will then get on with the next step
we've now harvested all our garlic and as you can see these are turned out to
be fantastic garlic what I usually do in order to be able to pull these out
relatively clean is I stop watering for about two or three days just before
harvesting and that will pull off most of the soil from within the roots and on
the on the surface of the skins so we just shake off as much of that soon
as we can without damaging the skins and that will suffice for now and we're
going to do that with all of these garlic's we're just going to get the
bulk off by pushing it shaking it and
that will keep them nice and clean in order to be able to do the next process
which is to cure the garlic now the garlic needs to be cured in order to
store it in the winter
it's a very important process guys get that soul off like I said allow it to
stay nice and dry to store garlic I use these now these
are a mesh tray and they sit into a shelving unit that I designed around
these particular trays and now I have three of them and I use these as well
for storing onions and they're a great way for doing that if you can it's great
in order to pull the leaves directly through the hole and store the garlic
upside down and I'll show you what I mean by this now so we just thread the
leaves through the hole and pull the garlic in so it's stored like this
within the tray and what this allows to do is for this section to dry and the
top in which to dry off if you've got huge leaves they may not go through and
in which case you can just lay them in the tray like this but if you can do
it's always better to get them fed through the holes most will go through
it's just a little bit of patience feeding those strings
even these big huge ones will go through if you damage the leaves it's not a
major issue but even the largest ones will go through look just like that
so that's how we store the garlic as you can see each bulb has plenty of room
for air to move around it and that's what's gonna help in the curing process
and this is how you should cure a garlic if you can't get him through these small
little holes and you've got nothing bigger then you can lay them in the tray
now to finish curing these we're going to leave them outside while it's nice
and warm and that'll help the skins form and with garlic to dry out and you'll
know when they're ready because these leaves will all turn brown and they will
start withering away which is what we want if the weather is going to turn bad
we're going to take them inside and we're going to stack them in the rack
out of the way but for today as you can see it's quite nice out we're gonna
leave them outside and they are going to get away and start drying now as far as
storing them goes hard neck varieties the easiest way to store those is to cut
off all the leaves leaving about two inches of stalk just above one of the
garlic so we're looking at sort of if I turn this on its side we want to be
leaving about two inches of stalk here okay and we're gonna cut the roots off
as well guys and then they're gonna get stored into a hessian sack or a net bag
or something like that or even they could be just stored on this tray and
left in a frost free cool dark place and they'll stay there all winter and
they'll be happy with that soft neck garlic when the best ways of storing
soft neck garlic is I either braid or plait that garlic now a lot of people
struggle with braiding and plaiting and I have a video up here that will help
you with that in a more in-depth step-by-step on how to braid and plait
garlic the braiding and plaiting garlic is a great way but the important thing
about storing garlic guys is air flow you must have air circulating around
these garlic bulbs it's no good putting them into a tub or something like that
or bag that can't breath okay now you know of the harvest cure
and store garlic and these are my best tips for harvesting curing and storing
garlic in 2018 I really love garlic is fantastic in all sorts of recipes things
like Bolognese and what have you so while you're waiting for guys get
yourself out there now you know all the tips to storing your garlic perfectly
get out there and harvest it now and store it ready for the winter if you've
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gardening
And I'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye