Rain-soaked Garlic

As anyone who lives here is well aware, we have had a LOT of rain in 2009. Our unscientific rain count is up to almost 31 inches here at our office. We are ahead of the airport, who is officially about 7 inches above normal. WOW.

Every book/article/publication I read about garlic says 'Don't water up to 2 weeks before harvesting garlic'. Well, try doing that this year! Some of the garlic is 50-75% dead, so to me, it's harvesting time, regardless of whether or not we've had 2 weeks of dry. Here's what I pulled up today.

I took a picture of them uncleaned to show just how gobby and wet it was. This bed is still mostly clay, even though we add organic matter every year. The variety pictured is 'Belarus' I think. We had a lot of plant death due to onion maggots and bacterial soft rot which made my rows out of whack.


They've been hung up with the other 8 bulbs I harvested 3 days ago. Here's a weird thing, I planted some garlic at home about 2-3 weeks BEFORE this garlic and none of it is ready to harvest yet. Not sure what that tells me except different sites, same varieties, different harvest time -- it's all about your site, I reckon.