How to dry garlic after digging?

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Almost all varieties of garlic can be dried and harvested for the winter. Best suited for harvesting a silver-white variety or creole. Vegetable culture perfectly retains its appearance, useful properties and taste. The plant is 40% dry matter. Therefore, problems with how to dry garlic should not arise, but certain rules must still be observed.

Types of garlic

There are two types of garlic varieties, depending on the time of planting:

• winter;
• spring.

Winter crops include Parus, Dubovsky, Alkor, Yubileiny Gribovsky and others. All of them are planted in the winter, that is, in the fall, but with the expectation that before the onset of winter, the teeth can take root in the ground. Depending on the region, the landing period is in September or October.

Spring varieties include Gulliver, Aleisky, Sochi 56 and others, planted in spring.

Storage conditions depending on the type of variety

You need to know how to store garlic depending on the type of variety:

1. Winter species are best stored at low temperature, in a room with high humidity. The temperature should be stable at 2-4 degrees.
2. Spring varieties, on the contrary, are better stored indoors at low humidity, but high temperature, about 20 degrees.

Where is the best place to plant garlic?

You should never plant vegetables after onions and potatoes. Best of all, garlic will grow where cucumbers, pumpkins and zucchini were previously planted. The plant loves soil that has succumbed to abundant organic fertilization.

Determining the degree of maturity

Even knowing all the rules on how to dry garlic, it still needs to be harvested in time.

Spring or autumn varieties of plants by the time of ripening have a yellowed aerial part, which, as a rule, lies on the ground. Harvest occurs around the second half of the last month of summer.

Winter varieties may not produce or, conversely, produce arrows. You can determine the degree of maturation by the following features:

• the skin of the inflorescences of the upper part of the plant begins to crack;
• lower leaves turn yellow;
• the scale of the bulbs dries out and becomes thin.

As a rule, the harvest period is at the end of July. Harvesting is recommended in dry and warm weather.

If you miss the most favorable time for harvesting, then no rules on how to dry garlic will help. Especially if young roots have already begun to erupt on the bottom of the bulb. overripe garliccan also be determined by the fact that the teeth of the bulb begin to disintegrate, and the scales burst.

Harvesting

It is best to dig garlic with a pitchfork, in which case the risk of damaging the bulbs is minimized. After that, the plants are laid out right on the garden bed to dry. It is necessary to chip the earth from the plant, but do not cut off the leaves.

If the weather is warm and dry, then the garlic does not need to be hidden anywhere, let it dry right on the beds. Naturally, if the weather is rainy, then the plants are hidden under a canopy. If it rains only at night, then during the day the bushes can be taken out into the sun, and at night they can be hidden under a canopy. Pre-drying takes about 5 days.

Now you need to clean the garlic from the earth and dirt and leave it to dry for another 2-3 weeks. The room where the garlic will be dried should be well ventilated. You can determine the readiness of the plant for further storage by the uniformity of the color of the dried leaves. The main thing is that you do not need to cut the stems and roots until the garlic is completely dry. During the drying period, garlic additionally gains nutrients and increases in weight. Do not knock heads against each other, so as not to damage them. In no case should garlic be washed, even if it had to be harvested in rainy weather.

These simple rules on how to dry garlic after digging up will help you prepare your crop for the next wintering as well as possible.

Preparing for storage

After the garlic has dried, it must be prepared forfurther storage:

• Search and set aside the one that was damaged by digging.
• Cut off the upper above-ground part by 10 cm.
• Cut the roots, leaving about 3 cm.

Temperature conditions

Depending on the type of variety, garlic must be stored under different conditions. How to properly dry the garlic of autumn varieties - at a temperature of 16 to 20 degrees. Winter varieties must be stored in cool rooms, at a temperature of 2 to 4 degrees. You should also know that winter garlic is worse stored and more prone to disease, quickly loses moisture. The humidity in the storage area should be between 50-80%.

Methods of storage

How to properly dry garlic after digging? If all the rules are followed, you can proceed to the direct preparation of the crop for winter storage. So what are the ways?

Weave and store

Braids are the most common way that has existed since ancient times. Leaves in this case are removed, leaving only a false stem. All plants are intertwined with twine so that the “construction” for storage is strong. At the bottom, you need to form a loop that will allow you to hang the garlic in the basement or locker. By the same principle, garlic can be woven into so-called brooms.

The storage location should be dark, not too damp and always cool.

Garlic can be stored in nets or wicker baskets.

S alt

There is another storage method - in sterilizedbanks. For this method, only those crops that have been prepared according to all the rules of how to dry garlic after harvesting are suitable. The bulbs do not need to be scaled. Glass jars are well washed and sterilized. Plant heads are placed in jars and sprinkled with coarse s alt. The main feature of this method is that s alt does not allow garlic to “sick”. Instead of cans, you can use wooden boxes with low sides.

Cloth bags

Our ancestors kept garlic in linen bags. Depending on the humidity of the room in which the plant will be stored, it is prepared. If the humidity is low, then the garlic is simply mixed with dry husks. At high humidity, vegetables are pre-rinsed in s alt concentrate and dried thoroughly. Only after the bulbs are dry, the garlic is placed in cloth bags. S alt prevents the plant from getting sick and prevents pests from spoiling the harvest.

In no case should you store garlic with other vegetables.

What are the storage problems?

Often people complain that even if all the rules of how to dry garlic after digging are followed, despite proper further storage, there are problems with the harvest.

However, if mold appears, then this already indicates that the bulbs were not dried well or the crop was frozen. Mold quickly "spreads" if the room is high humidity and very warm. In this case, we can recommenddry the garlic in direct sunlight, of course, after cleaning it of mold.

If the garlic, on the contrary, dries out a lot, then it can be dipped in melted paraffin. A thin protective layer is formed on the bulb, which will not allow moisture to evaporate. In addition, paraffin will protect the plant from pathogens.