Home | How It Works | Ideas | Calendar | Newsletter | Contact Hodgson Biologic Calendar Upcoming Events There are no events. Hodgson Biologic 2 Klarides Village Drive Box 205 Seymour, Connecticut 06483 203-888-3898 In Connecticut's Naugatuck Valley June, 2009 Show Full Year Event: Garlic Will Soon Be Ready for Harvest Date: June 20th, 2009. Garlic 5-27-2009 In this part of the world, garlic is generally planted in the fall and harvested the following summer. I start checking the garlic rows for signs of readiness in late June. The softneck varieties I have (Red Toch, Inchelium Red) mature first. One the rule of thumb is to wait for a certain percentage (some say a third, some half, some three fourths) of the leaves to turn yellow or brown. I find these varieties begin to lie down as if to say, "done!" They don't always have that many yellow leaves. But when I pull them, they are clearly ready for harvest. The softnecks have even started looking droopy late in June, so I start watching for changes much more closely around the 20th. The hardnecks mature later, and not all at once. For these, I do pay attention to color, as they remain erect, even as their cloves begin to separate. The clove separation is part of the normal life cycle of the garlic, and doesn't seem to make the garlic any less tasty. But loose cloves are more difficult to find in the soil. In addition to watching color change, I pull one garlic from each row the last week of June. The Italian Easy Peel is ready first, and that's the one I start checking. Over the next two weeks, they all mature and I harvest them a row at a time. I learned that the best way for me to harvest is a row at a time because then I take the time to weed one last time, rake in some compost, perhaps lime or wood ash if the pH needs to come up, broadcast and rake in buckwheat as a green manure for the next crop, and straighten things up. When I used to harvest the whole garlic patch at once, it seemed a massive chore, and I would put off the post-harvest soil conditioning, sometimes until just before replanting. That means I missed the green manure step. June, 2009 Show Full Year

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