Hey there,
It is about time to be pulling the garlic.
We got a lot of rain on Sunday, so we will wait for it to dry a little bit before we pull it. Our process is to fork around the garlic to loosen it. Close enough to make pulling easy, but not too close to stab or gouge any of the bulbs with the tines of the fork. Once loose, we pull, shake off any excess soil, and arrange in piles of 20. Once piled, I go around after with a 3-4' length of twine and using a slipped half hitch (I googled the proper name for this knot) I tie a bundle of garlic on each end of the twine. This makes it easy to pick multiple bundles up at a time by simply grabbing the twine and lugging them around like heavy shopping bags, but it also allows us to make a tight knot that can be both tightened later, and easy untied when we are cleaning the garlic.
The next step is hauling all the bundles up to the garage, where between the roof joists we have multiple bars to hang the bundles over. The process of hanging them in the garage is pretty hot and sweaty, going up and down the ladder with the heavy bundles, then slinging one bundle over the bar to get them to hang often results in a lot of dust in your face. But, the end result is totally worth it. Not only is the garlic totally out of the way so that the garage is still a functional space, but having a sea of bulbs curing above your head, and the smell of the garage for a few weeks, is pretty awesome.
It also gives me some special feels, in that, it is the only crop we grow, where we exclusively grow from our own source year to year for the last 10 years. We haven't bought garlic to plant, or really to eat, for 10 years and that is a pretty sweet feeling.
