It’s a little tricky. I don’t want to be too early, but being late is worse. Harvesting garlic, like most things we grow, it’s all about timing. Ideally, garlic is harvested when the meat of the cloves begins to separate from the tissue of the paper surrounding the cloves. Even if the roots look deep and strong, it is not going to grow anymore. Scientifically, you can tell this by slicing a head of garlic in half, equator-wise, and looking at what is going on inside the garlic head. I was taught this by a Cornell University Ag School vegetable expert. In a more in-field observational anecdotal way, my old Jamaican friend, Rupert, would call this stage of the garlic, “ripe.” “It is ripe,” he would declare, or “It is full.” “Richie, they are full,” he would say with pride, the head of garlic lying, uncut, in the flat of his smooth palm.

One of the variables in predicting the harvest date is the planting dating. Because we planted 15,000 cloves by hand, some garlic was planted two to three weeks earlier than others. Plants, even garlic, have a limited life span. They mature of their own accord, at their own rate. We have planted six varieties of garlic in two different field environments and certain varieties, as another variable, mature earlier in their life cycle. Some types just don’t live as long.

One of our varieties this year is Spanish Roja. I tried growing some this year in both our upland “hill” soil and some in our “black dirt” field. The demand for Roja was very high last year at the garlic festivals and few growers seemed to have any. One main Roja grower from upstate was missing and this created a panic, not quite a Tulip Panic, but a panic nonetheless! All of our Spanish Roja, in both fields, is ready to pull. Obviously, it is an “early” maturing variety. It can’t stay in the ground through another rain cycle. It will begin to burst. When a garlic head is past its ideal harvest date, it can begin to grow outside of itself, to expand to the point where, if left alone, it will just begin growing again for next year, one big pod of garlic.

We are pulling the Spanish Roja on the hill today, trying to beat the rain. We pulled the Spanish Roja from the black dirt on Wednesday and it is hanging in the shed, sorted, tied, and drying, with a fan circulating air around the bundles to cure the heads.

When I say “pulling,” that is aspirational. The quickest and easiest way to harvest garlic is to grab it by the stalk with both hands and pull it out of the ground – hence, “pulling” the garlic. Unfortunately, many times the garlic will not release from the soil, and in the black dirt we found the roots were so deep it was necessary to dig most of the heads. I took a shovel and sank it in next to two heads as close as I could get without the blade of the shovel damaging the bulbs and lifted the soil, bulbs, and whatever weeds were nearby, while my helper, Elhadji, pulled the heads out of the ground by their stalks. We brushed the lingering soil off the roots by hand, and carefully stacked the garlic plants, gently, in a plastic crate, or bushel basket, for transport to the back of the Tacoma. Any roughhousing can create bruises on the green, uncured garlic. Handle them like you would peaches!

We are just small timers. Some farmers use a blade attached by three-point-hitch to a tractor and drive down the whole row, four or five heads wide, and undercut the entire strip with the blade underground like a flat broad knife, plowing it, lifting the entire row from the ground, and loosening the garlic for pick up by a field helper. Oddly, the garlic in the brown dirt of the hill is easier to pull. We were able to harvest two of the three rows of Roja before the rain today. The Roja is stacked on tables on the edge of the field, the roots all in one direction and covered with tarp until I get there to sort, tie, and transport the graded bundles to the drying sheds.

Any ill-formed, diseased, or damage bulbs must also be harvested to help keep the soil free of pathogens, and these damaged bulbs must be dug by hand and set aside from the general crop. Good to eat, but not to sell or plant, this is the farmer’s bounty, and I love garlic and cook with it almost every time I cook.

We have a long way to go but have a great start to the “pulling of the garlic.” Just wait ‘til we get to that “Giant Russian Purple.” Oh baby. They need another week or two to reach full maturity, which is great because that gives me time to get in the bees and spin out some honey.