Well, welcome back everyone.

Kevin Espiritu here from the Epic Gardening Podcast.

We've been going on a garlic journey this week.

It's Garlic Week with Jeremy of Squared Roots Farm, who is a Sea Garlic Week with Jeremy of Squared Roots Farm who is a seed garlic producer also a

culinary garlic producer we've been talking about all the different things that

go into growing garlic and now finally we're at the harvest stage.

So Jeremy when we're talking about harvesting, first of all how do you know when to harvest and then of course we can talk then about the ensuing process that comes after that amazing moment.

Sure, sure.

So yeah, we're getting close to harvest.

We've removed our scapes.

We've cut the water back substantially through the last month of growing.

Something to consider is your garlic is going to really bowl about those last few weeks of growing. So this is the last stretch and once the garlic starts to ripen the outer leaves will start to die off and it will start

with the outer leaves and work its way in.

The way that you know when it's time to harvest, you're going to have about five or six green leaves remaining on the plant.

And when you get ready to cure and dry the bulb these five green

leaves will be the wrappers of the bulb and those wrappers protect the garlic and allow you to have a longer, you know, a shelf life and allow you to keep that garlic. So if we wait till there's you know two or three leaves

green leaves remaining by the time you get your garlic cured and ready to eat

there might not be any wrappers left.

So definitely something to consider.

Is there anything, Jeremy, to the idea that when the neck starts to kind of go soft and fall over a bit, that's a good indicator?

Definitely for your soft neck varieties that can also be a great indicator. We also see that with our turban variety which is a hard neck variety but sometimes it doesn't bolt and we'll see that that

neck fall over as you mentioned and that's when we know we got to take this garlic out because if we wait any longer it's going to it's going to start to kind of falling apart in the soil.

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