I started today harvesting my first few garlics. The Asiatic Turban and Creole types always need to be harvested a little earlier that the others, so I started with these. Even though there are several different varieties of garlic in the picture, they all look pretty similar, with the characteristic reddish skin of the Turban types.
They look really good this year. They also smell wonderful! The Turbans are among the most aromatic varieties, and among my favorites. The only drawback is they do tend to fall apart in the ground if you harvest them too late and they are a little more susceptible to garlic rust.
Those are absolutely gorgeous Patrick! If they are more aromatic than my garlic was this year, I’d better not grow it. Our house was inundated with the fabulous smell of fresh garlic for days and days and the whole time all I could think of was food food food!
Looking good…
I’d better put some more in then (middle of winter here).
Hey Patrick,
I have recently got into growing garlic and have become a tad obsessed! It is wonderful to grow and I’ve been getting a lot of great information from your blog. I was wondering if you would be willing to help me try to identify one for which I haven’t been able to get much information from the seller. You seem to have grown a wide variety and might be able to help me narrow down to a short list of possibles.
Jo,, Rainman: Thanks for the comments.
Barrett: It’s very difficult to determine what the variety is in this way. The same garlic grown in two different places can look very different. It can also depend on the climate, etc. I’ll try to help, and I’ll send you an email.
Great looking Garlic! I’m gonna have to try my hand with garlic next year, I love the stuff:)
One thing that always confounds me is When To Harvest Garlic. I usually seem to leave things too late, but then it’s always a race against Rust…
Do you have a post somewhere about this?
Kathy made a pretty good post about harvesting several days ago (including the comment from me):
http://carletongarden.blogspot.com/2010/07/garlic-harvest.html
Basically, if you’ve got rust, try to harvest before it dies completely!