On Friday I blogged about my surprise at having planted Soft Stem garlic instead of the Hard Stem variety that we usually plant. Now that the garlic has been dug, it needs to be dried. With the hard stem garlic I would always weave twine around the cloves at the stem, one clove next to the other, creating a string of garlic which I would then hang to dry.
Because the Soft Stem garlic has a “soft stem,” I was able to just braid the stems of the garlic to create a bunch that I could hang. I hadn’t done any braiding for years, and with the garlic, adding stem after stem to the braid, it got pretty complicated trying to braid all of the stems together, but although not a thing of beauty, I was able to braid the garlic into a long bunch to hang.
I will let it hang for a few weeks, and it should dry out pretty quickly, since the Robson Valley is back in its drought mode. We won’t be eating all of this garlic. I will pick out maybe 100 or so of the best cloves and plant them in the fall to give us next year’s crop.
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Without looking it up, I think the soft stem garlic goes bad first...or doesn't keep as well.
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