This Garlic Seed Library Needed an Ark

 Well, 2024 harvest has been fun! First we had some hurricane leftovers (nothing like what the southern United States dealt with of course, but a good 4 inches of rain none the less. I thought, okay, its early enough, we have time to let things dry out before I need to pull the garlic out. Well...

Yeah, we got more rain after that.

I was feeling a bit desperate on July 15th and went out with a wheelbarrow and a shovel. 

I was thinking, well, I can salvage some varieties! 

I'm very grateful that after that, it quit raining for about a week. I moved on it immediately, and started hand digging in the mud, then in the sticky clay, all the way into the reasonably dry top soil/still a little sticky underneath. Near the grand finally of our harvest window, it would have been possible to get the tractor out there, but it was hardly worth the set up. Besides, my sister and I are well conditioned to hand digging garlic - we do some of it every year, and it is how we got started, before we rented, and then purchased a black plastic lifter, that serves as our undercutter for the garlic.

On the last major day of harvest, July 21st, we did Red Russian and Duganskij MPS. They did not initially look ready, but I was suspicious of the top leaves turning uniformly yellowish, and sure enough, many of the bulbs were actually rotting in the ground. We've had to sort a lot of them out for emergency processing in our food dehydrator. 

The amazing thing is that it still looks like I have a something of a crop - there is just a lot more sorting and second grade bulbs. Once we did the work of getting them into the barn, it seemed possible to continue. The Catalogue will be much reduced this year, and the verdict is undecided about how much, of what kinds, I will grow next year. I need to determine what seed to save. This week I will start trimming, and will get a better idea of what I've got to work with.

Another feature is that with the adequate rainfall earlier in the summer, the some Porcelain bulbs are truly enormous! So, there is always something positive to focus on! I'll try to get some pictures while I trim and sort :-)

All the best with all of your own garlic adventures! Julie