Curing garlic and shallots

I harvested the garlic and onion today! For all their gourmet-ness, these are both lazy-gardner's plants. We planted the garlic last November by shoving several cloves in the ground. (I use "Russian Red" because it stores well and has a nice strong flavor. I'm sure storebought works too, but if you're going to plant it, might as well getsomething strong!) We then completely ignored it. It popped up in early spring, out of the snow, and started going from there. We planted the shallots in spring, and then also ignored them.

So, both got nice and huge, and then started yellowing just before the 4th. Traditionally apparently, one harvests these on the 4th, and they looked ready, so we did!

This was our first year with shallots. They grow like onions, but in little bunches. Each shallot is about the size of a baby onion.

Saul planted about 10 shallots. Each shallot bunched off loads of babies, and we harvested over 70 shallots!

So, the "curing" thing. This is the one not-lazy part of these plants. Apparently you don't just pull them up and put them in storage. You have to encourage a nice protective layer of papery skin across the top so they don't rot. So, you set them out, tops and roots and all, in a warm and partly-sunny place to "cure". Once they're mostly dry, it'll be time to braid them and store them. So, out on the porch they go.

That's 17 garlic plants by the way. We went a little overboard this year....again. But on the other hand, we can always give them away, and I really like the garlic scapes we get from all of them in June.

Of course, the biggest ones we won't actually store. Those go in a separate space, to be planted in the fall! Best part about these plant: I don't have to order more plants or seeds ever again, and I don't have to baby any seedlings.