IF YOU GROW IT, YOU MUST PEEL IT

Garlic is a lovely, set-it-and-forget-it kind of a crop. If you will recall, I planted my bed of garlic in October. The only time I had to pay attention to it was to water it if there were too many dry days – which did not happen often.

Last year, I felt I harvested a little early. I thought I had to pull it when the plants started to die back. As a result, I had very small bulbs. Also, about a month after that, a You Tuber I occasionally watch, mentioned he was harvesting his garlic. This this is all I got last year – you can look HERE for last year’s harvest & processing to compare to this year’s.

We had a very rainy spring so when I checked at the beginning of June, the plants had just started to die back. We continued to get a lot of rain after that, so I had not paid it any attention until last Thursday when I noticed the garlic plants had entirely disappeared! I feared the worst – that something had gotten it – but that was, fortunately, not the case.

When we harvested it last Friday, we had to feel around for the bulbs and dig them up. Usually you would just pull them up by the plant. My 14-year-old grandson was visiting so I “let” him help. After all, the following generations need to know where their food comes from, too! I took additional advantage of the help and had him completely turn over the bed as we were removing the garlic, getting it ready to plant something else.

Without much plant attached, I harvested a whole bucket of garlic bulbs.

I trimmed it up and because I am going to make it into garlic powder, not prepare it for long-term storage, I found out that I don’t have to let it cure for several weeks like I did last year.

Instead, because they were so muddy and wet, I put them on a paper towel and ran a fan on them for a few days, rotating the paper towel a few times a day.

I’m glad I did this because that’s when the little worms started showing up. Hmm, I didn’t think garlic had any pests but, according to some articles I read, yeah, it does. I never did determine what the worms were but they didn’t harm the garlic so that was good. Through this research, I also learned you should not grow garlic in the same bed every year – something that I’ve seen other gardeners do. Well, now I know, so I’ll just have to find another plot next year. In the meantime, the fan did the trick with the worms, causing them to leave the garlic and then dry out and die.

After that, I separated the cloves and let them dry under the fan a little longer.

I remembered how sore my fingers were from peeling garlic last year. With so much more of it this year, I was not looking forward to that task! Usually, I just smash the clove with the flat side of a knife and pick off the skin. I couldn’t do that this time though – it was just So Dirty. So, I Googled to see if there were other methods.

There were two other ways that I decided we could try. One was to put a few bulbs at a time into a container and vigorously shake. This sounded like the perfect activity to utilize the 14-year-old for again! Surprisingly, it worked. However, because there was so much dirt, even though most of the cloves were peeled, they were now covered in dirt. We peeled about half the cloves this way. The other way we tried was to soak the cloves in hot water for a minute or two. We really liked this method – the peels often just slipped off. If one was too stubborn, we’d just plop it back into the hot water for a bit longer. The best thing about this method though is that the cloves also came out CLEAN. In the future, this is the method I will use!

I prepared the cloves for the dehydrator by smashing and slicing them. I had so much garlic that I filled the entire dehydrator, not just a couple of trays.

Running the dehydrator with that much garlic was a stinky business, and overpowering, so it ended up on the porch for the first 24 hours. Then, when the smell was not so pungent, it was allowed to come into the house to finish.

Thursday morning, we ran the dehydrated pieces through the blender and bottled them up. I have quite a lot more garlic powder for this next year!

Is all this effort worth it? To me, yes it is! That’s especially true after finding the hot water method to peel it. The flavor of this homemade garlic powder from home-grown garlic is so much better than the stuff you get at the grocery store. Plus, every time I use my garlic powder, I get a feeling of satisfaction that this is here by my own efforts.