Garlic Harvest!

If you have been following my blog for a while, you know that I planted garlic for the first time last fall.  (The garden experts said that up north in cold climates, a person needs to plant garlic just before winter, and cover it with straw to "grow" all winter long).  I had my doubts about the survival of the little garlic cloves in 30 below zero temps up here, but the garlic did grow and came up this spring in full force.   I had posted photos of my lush garlic patch.  Well, now it is ready to harvest!   Again, the internet experts say that garlic is ready to harvest when at least the bottom 2 or 3 leaves are brown and many of the upper leaves are turning brown.   Here is what the garlic patch looked like this morning in the greenhouse:

The garlic looks ready to harvest - bottom leaves are brown and dead, and upper leaves are also turning brown. 

So I dug up a few plants to see what's what.  And yes!  It looks beautiful!

The harvested garlic.  The lower three plants are from commercial garlic, and the upper one is from a local grower.  Not sure of the variety, but it is bigger than the commercial stuff.  I only tried about 8 plants of commercially grown garlic, and planted 62 plants of the larger locally grown garlic cloves.

Here's a close up:

Four great looking heads of garlic! 

So I now can say I know how to grow garlic, and it will be something I grow every year.   I use a lot of garlic in my dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, spaghetti sauce, salsa, and also for every day cooking (zucchini sauteed in fresh garlic butter is fantastic!).    Now I need to let it "cure" for several weeks in a cool, dry place until the plants are really dry.   Then I will need to cut off the stem part, and trim the root part,  and store the garlic heads in mesh bags (I had neighbors and friends save me onion and other mesh bags just for this purpose.) I will also sell some of the garlic in our farmer's market booth.   I have a feeling that homegrown garlic will have a much fresher and better taste than the stuff a person can buy at the stores (and who knows where that comes from??)
     Anyway, my big garlic experiment was a huge success!!  Now I need to save some cloves to replant this fall.