The 2012 Garlic Harvest

The 2012 garlic harvest is in the books! I dug up and braided the last ones (our late Italian variety) this morning:


This last braid is also my very best one--it's as tall as I am! (By the way, that's 5'2", since I think I use this measurement fairly regularly.) It's the biggest one by far:


So that's this season's garlic, curing on the porch. All told, it's about 130 bulbs (not counting the tiny ones that went straight to the kitchen). This means we have 2 1/2 bulbs of garlic per week until next year's harvest — that's probably more than we need. On the other hand, we'll blow through quite a bit of it when canning season comes around in a few weeks (think pasta sauce, salsa, pickles, and relishes). 

Finally, very sharp-eyed readers may notice a difference between this garlic harvest photo and the last one (besides the obvious part about there being  more garlic braids now). Hint: Look up at the ceiling.

This past week we dove headlong into renovating our screened-in porch into a pleasant, usable space to avoid mosquitos when the sun goes down. I've been up on a ladder painting the porch ceiling this week, and it's taken up a lot of my time. The picture here shows the short side of the ceiling, but the roof slants up to meets the house, and I need to stand pretty much on the top step of the ladder to just barely reach the tippy top to paint. Slow work, and it's why I haven't posted as much this week (in case you were wondering). Before and after photos to follow ... whenever we finally get it done.

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