Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

We started the garlic harvest of 2016 on Sunday July 17th. At least three of the bottom leaves have dried out and the weather is a little unstable and wet looking over the next week or so, so the garlic is starting to come out. Two hours of harvest yesterday brought up maybe 1/3 of the 75 types and approx 500 bulbs planted. The biggest issue as always is keeping track of types, so we have worked out some processes to help.
1. when a plant comes out, the entire row of 6 come out.
2. each row goes into its own basket with its namestake.
3. each basket is gone through one at a time for removal of dirt, rinsing with water and possibly a peel being removed if necessary
4. each basket is hung up on the drying rack and a new nametag is added to the bunch
We take a look every few days to see if they have dried enough to warrant squeezing the drying racks a little closer together, lest they fall through the gap.
In about a month or so of drying outside in a shaded covered area with a lot of air circulation, they will come down, one bunch at a time, roots cut off, heads cut off and then weighed and measured. Lastly into a paper bag labelled with the name.