I tie mine together with twine and hang them on the fence to air dry in full sun. If it's rainy, like today, put them on a piece of screen or small mesh wire and put them in a dry place. or dry the tied bunch in your kitchen in a sunny window. When they are dry and their leaves are crunchy, hang them in your kitchen where they will stay dry and have air circulation. They will last until fall planting and beyond if you keep them dry. The slightest bit of humidity and they will begin to sprout and really stink up the place. You can tell I have had many experiences with drying garlic over the years. ;)

Hope this helps
~Annie

Melissia,

There are different ways to do it. Some people, for example, wash it after harvest and others only brush off the dirt with their hands. Some trim back the greens and roots fairly soon after harvest and others don't. Some trim them a lot and some trim them a little and others don't trim them much at all. Some hang it to dry while others spread it out on screens or wire racks, or even on tabletops covered with several layers of newspaper (to absorb any moisture so it doesn't become trapped between the bulb and the table). I think that what you do to cure your garlic often is determined by your soil and by how wet or how dry your garlic is when harvested. Ideally, you would withhold water that last couple of weeks to the garlic can dry down some on its own right before you harvest it, but in some parts of Oklahoma that have heavy May and June rains, that is not always possible.

When I harvest garlic, I usually brush off the dirt by hand if it is dry. If it is fairly moist, I let it dry for a day and brush off the dirt that has dried. If there still is a lot of dirt, I brush it off every day. My father taught me to never wash onions, garlic or potatoes with water after harvesting them because he felt it lengthened their curing time and shortened their storage time. (When I was a little kid, I couldn't understand why he stored "dirty potatoes" no matter how many times he told me. I just wanted to wash them!) Thus, I hate to use water because the wrappers get wet and sometimes shrivel or even can mildew if there is high humidity. Sometimes I use a little vegetable scrub brush from my kitchen to gently brush off stubborn dirt. I normally cure mine by laying them on wire racks in 100% shade---you don't want direct sun or dew/rainfall on it after it is harvested. The amount of time I cure it varies depending on how wet or dry the garlic was when harvested and also depending on how humid the air is. This year, it's been REALLY humid, so the curing time will be longer rather than shorter. It can vary from a week or two if the garlic and the air are really pretty dry to start out with or three weeks or more if the garlic and soil were pretty wet and the air remains humid. In really wet years, I have cured it endlessly...probably 4 to 6 weeks....because it had a high water content when harvested and high humidity remained in the air constantly.

To store it, you want to keep it in moderate humidity out of direct sunlight and at moderate temperatures. Some years I have stored it on wire shelves in my pantry. My pantry is dark and cool as it sits under an interior stairway in the very center of the house. Other years, I have stored it tied in bundles and hanging from storage shelves in my tornado shelter, which doubles as a root cellar. It has really cool temperatures, decent humidity and is dark and dry so it is an ideal place to store garlic, onions, potatoes and they last forever when stored in there. The daytime highs in the summer still stay mostly in the 70s in the tornado shelter, so it is a great storage space.

If you don't have room for a lot of garlic in your pantry, anywhere in the house that the temperature and humidity stay at a fairly constant level is good. In my house, the floor of an upstairs storage closet works well for interior storage too because it is in the very center of the house so its temperature/humidity stay fairly constant. You can store it in net bags, in doubled brown paper bags, in bundles tied or braided togther and hanging from a shelf, or in a terra cotta storage crock or flower pot covered with a lid. When I move it from curing to storage, I do clip off much of the roots, but I leave a somewhat longer stem on it than you'll find with grocery storage garlic...maybe an inch or two. Remember to save enough to replant in the fall, or you can replant small cloves right after you harvest. I do that pretty often. The stuff I replant won't do much right after it is replanted, but it keeps me from 'forgetting' to plant garlic in fall because I'm too busy harvesting and putting up other crops. People who have high soil moisture level might not have success with replanting right after harvest, but it has worked for me every time I've done it.

Properly cured garlic that is stored at medium humidity and moderate interior temperatures (not wildly varying temps like you'd have in a garage, barn or shed in OK in the summer) will last for months and months. I find it lasts a lot longer without sprouting than most grocery store garlic.

You can grow whatever you want in the area where you had garlic, harvest it and then replant garlic there in the autumn. I usually put fall tomatoes in that spot and then plant garlic there after they have been removed. I like to add compost to the spot before the garlic goes back in, especially since I have clay soil and drainage is always an issue.

Dawn

Thanks so much.

Annie - I've never heard of doing it in full sun. I've read that isn't good for the garlic. . . granted you have WAY more experience than me - this is my first year growing it.

I have put it in the spare bedroom -- we don't have a shelter (yet) - and our shop gets super hot, so I think the spare bedroom is the best place to cure it.

Dawn -- I know what you mean by wanting to wash the potatoes - my great grandpa was a patato farmer and he had buried an old train car for his cellar - it had shelves in it and he stored his potatoes and onions in there, it was cool and dark - they did last forever and he never washed his potatoes either. The cellar always smelled like dirt.

Thanks for your help in any question that I have.

And thanks Jay for sending the garlic.

I just pulled my garlic yesterday, later than it should have been. I cure mine in the greenhouse -- now fully covered and in shade for the summer and with a fan keeping the air in motion, windows wide open. My poor, pathetic onions are in there, too. LOL I lay them all flat on old feed sacks or sheets or whatever is handy at the time, on top of a shelf so there's plenty of air circulation all around them.

Diane

Melissia,

I would just love to have a buried train car as a root cellar. Wouldn't that be amazing! I don't think my DH would be happy if I told him I wanted to find and purchase an old train car, and hire someone to haul it here, and hire someone to dig a big old hole and bury it.....so I guess I won't suggest it to him, but I think it would be so cool!

Dawn

Sorry, I didn't mean you store them in full sun, just dry them that way for a few days. At least that is how I have always done it. When I lived in the desert, we hung garlic and peppers to dry on the patio from one of the posts. If it is rainy or damp, I dry them on mesh screens in the greenhouse. Then I put them in mesh bags, the ones that onions come in, so they get air all around. I have a two-tiered wire basket that holds my garlic and onions. I leave all their papery outer skins intact.

Mine don't last long enough to worry about them going bad. Same with onions.

Thanks Dawn for adding to, and correcting my goof up.
and for answering her other questions. You are a storehouse of knowledge, I swear.

~Annie

I try to pull mine on a hot day and let lay in the sun for a few hours. Of course that isn't too hard here. Then tie them into fair sized bundles by wrapping the synthetic baling twine around the tops. Then run it over the top of a purlin on my carport and let them hang for 3-4 weeks. I don't clean or cut roots till I take them down. And store in a dark cool dry place and they should be fine for sometime. I think it will be another 2 weeks before I pull any. Then with the varieties I have it will be strung out some.Jay

Thanks for the affirmation Jay! I haven't pulled mine yet either, but I think I'm within 2 weeks. I was afraid I was behind....but then again, this has been a really weird gardening season (don't we say that every years? ha!)

Paula