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Where do you dry your alliums?

18 years ago

I don't have a proper place to cure garlic, onions and shallots. The only area I have outdoors, with a roof, is a shed...and that's very hot and certainly doesn't have good air circulation. The only other place is my front porch and that looks kinda tacky. I mean, the UPS guy is startin' to look at me wierd...and I think the neighbors are just being nice when they say..."oh no...WE UNDERSTAND."

I harvested most of my alliums today. Some last week. It's currently raining lightly and I've had to move them all to the floor of my 10X28 front porch. It's startin' to get really crowded out there.

So what do you do? Surely EVERYONE doesn't have a 2 car garage. Would be nice tho..

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Comments (5)

coho
18 years ago
I have a 28 x 80" air force barracks building. I can usually find enough room to put everything. Still pretty hot. Over 100 all week.Put everything on the floor this year. Somewhat cooler there.
gardenlad
18 years ago
I'm using an extra bedroom and the kitchen, this year.

Used to have a barn, but it went down in a storm and haven't rebuilt it yet.

I don't think the heat matters all that much, so long as they're not in direct sunlight, which can cook them. At SSE they hang garlic in the loft of a barn, where it often exceeds 100 degrees with little or no crossbreeze. Doesn't seem to harm their bulbs.
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aka_peggy
Original Author
18 years ago
Thanks for the imput.

Coho...air force barracks building huh? Well that must be nice, lol.

Ok Gardenlad, if temps don't matter, I'll hang them in the shed. I'll bet it's 120 degrees in that shed today. There's no cross breeze unless I happen to need something from the shed.

Now I do have a spare bedroom too...hmmm....
Nelz
18 years ago
A few years back I was being very anal retentive and felt I needed to have as much environmental control as possible to cure my garlic. It was very hot and humid out, and my garage was just way too hot, and NO air circulation.

aside: Previous owner had it built. It's a heavily re-inforced 24x32 pole barn structure with an 8" concrete floor. 2 individual insulated garage doors, and a heavy duty man-door. More outlets and lights than you can use, and heavy duty garage door openers. What's missing, WINDOWS!! I painted some on the inside and hung cloth, like curtains. I told my wife it's to remind me to put in windows, if not soon, whenever we need to re-side it.

Back on track. So, I figured, the basement. It runs 70-75 in the summer, I can somewhat control humidity with the de-humidifier. So up it went. I hung copper pipe from the floor joists, and hung over 100 bundles of garlic, 10 to a bundle.

I turned on the oscillating fan, opened the window and set the dehumidifier. The we left for the weekend.

Came back Sunday to this faint smell of garlic in the back yard. Found out it was wafting from the window. I like my garlic, but the house wreaked. My wife and daughter went to a hotel, I was left home to move all the garlic and air out the house!!

A few weeks later I made a dozen or so braids, and hung them in the kitchen to finish curing in a hanging position. After a few days they too ended up in the garage.

Now, I hang them in the garage, leave a door open and run a fan on them. I also have some old wire racks I got from a grocery store where I can lay things out if needed.
aka_peggy
Original Author
18 years ago
ROLOL!!!! reminds me of my 1st compost pile when I lived in the city and my yard was a total of 80sf. Actually it was a courtyard. We had so many flies in the house that summer we had to go out and buy a couple of dozen of those gross sticky flypaper things and hang them all over the house. I don't know which was worst. Live and learn, eh?

So the shed it is!

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