Curing garlic

So there is some debate I have found on the internet.
One place you look it says to hang garlic bulbs down.
Other place say hang them bulbs up.
So what is everyone's option on this? I went ahead and hung some both ways so we will see what happens.
I am in south west new mexico so it hot and dry right now.

looks good to me its what they do here in France and they know a thing or two about Garlic

David do they hang it bulbs up or bulbs down tho that is the question

In my garden, garlic gets pulled, then thrown on the ground to dry for a few days, (edit to add -- in a shady spot), then the tops are cut off, and the bulbs are tossed into a box.

We do ours bulb down simply because it seems easiest. Interested to hear how your experiment goes though.


Man, those pictures are making me sweat just looking at em. Must make drying quick and easy though.


Joseph, interesting; I'd always believed that too much sun exposure was a bad thing for drying garlic!

Dillon: Sorry for telling half the story. I usually lay the pulled garlic bulbs in a place where they are shaded from the mid-day sunlight, such as right next to a row of corn, or under a tree, or use the leaves to shade the just pulled bulbs. Relative humidity around here is often 5% to 15% during garlic harvest season, and zero chance of dew, so that works out well for me. Sometimes, I pull garlic in late afternoon, and collect it in the morning. Did I mention that it's very arid here?!

I've never noticed a problem with drying them directly in the sun, but with our cloudless skies, I don't like laying any propagules, of any species, in full sun for the whole day. I also get the squash and melons out of the field as soon as I have picked them, for the same reason: No point cooking them before storage.

I have bakers racks that I put my garlic on to cure. So, sideways works just fine. I doubt if up, down, or sideways makes any difference.

I pull the garlic, lay it out on racks asap. I cure it in a garage that's a little cooler than outside.

My climate is very similar to yours.

For soon after harvest eating we grow hard neck, they don't store for long so we dry them on racks for a week or two under cover from sun.
We are high humidity in the summers so we have to make sure that the sun doesn't hit them and that dew can't settle on them as they cure.

For long term storage garlic (soft Neck) I just braid them and hang them by the end of the braid, again out of the sun and where moisture can't settle on the drying bulbs.

Bryant RedHawk wrote:For soon after harvest eating we grow hard neck, they don't store for long so we dry them on racks for a week or two under cover from sun.

I’m curious, how long does your hard neck garlic store? That’s all I’ve grown so far. I pull it mid summer-ish, let it lay around a couple days in the dining room to dry out some, then bundle up with twin and hang to finish curing, usually in my pantry room because I don’t have any outbuildings. I’ve only had two harvests so far, first wasn’t much garlic so I used it up well before 6 months. Last year’s I think lasted decently for about 8 months. The last couple heads were getting some shrinking cloves, so wouldn’t have lasted much longer. To me that seems like a long time, is it not compared to soft neck?

@jen the longest storing garlics that I grow would be creoles which can store for well over 12m followed by silverskins.

Our growing zone is the quivalent of the US 9A.

Creoles prefer warmer temperatures so usually yield small bulbs for me.

The marbled and standard purple stripes usually store for about 6-8 months for me.

Which varietal group of harneck do you grow?

I harvest and bundle, then hang under the eaves of the house, out of sun and rain for a couple of weeks. They hang bulb-down, but I don't recall reading it has to be that way, I'm just not sure how I'd do it another way. It's all hardneck varieties. My garlic will only last a few months at kitchen temps but over a year in the cellar.

I have wire storage racks in my garage that we used this year. Laid the bulbs flat with space for airflow. It seemed to work for both hardneck and softneck, and used what was easily available.

At a farm stand yesterday, they had tables made of T-posts with a plastic grid material as the tops in a shaded but open air barn, then the garlic on top with fans blowing over it.

Just a couple ideas. We’re in the southeast (8a).

i only grow hardnecks. i cure them for about 6 weeks on a screen (lying down, so bulbs not up or down) out of the sun in our old tobacco barn. enough of last year’s harvest lasts maybe 13 months in a box in one of our less dry rooms. i tolerate a bit of squidginess in the last few months.

Megan Palmer wrote:.Which varietal group of harneck do you grow?

I wish I could answer, I know they’re called red and purple Russian, bought from territorial seed. They’re white outside with inner skins having reddish or purplish streaks. I chose to try them because of their cold hardiness. I live in much colder temps. We recently got bumped up to zone 6 from zone 5, but I still garden like it’s zone 5.

First off, I grow hardnecks and elephant garlic; the softnecks are braidable but they seem to be more troubled by rot for me--I am not convinced of the claim that softnecks keep longer. I harvest them usually the last week of June--it was a bit earlier this year, probably because of heat and drought, which I'm blaming for the small size of most. We got the idea from Pam Dowell(?)'s book--the head gardener at Twin Oaks--to hang a big square of 2" mesh poultry netting, upstairs, and thread the garlic through the holes, which means they're probably more horizontal than anything else. It helps to cut the end first, so you have about a foot of stem. This way they don't take up nearly the space of laying out all over the floors. I need that floorspace for the onions, which I typically harvest the first week of July.  This would not work for softneck garlic, for the same reason it wouldn't work for onions--the weight of the bulb would pull it off with no stiff stem to hold it in place. Our humidity is about the inverse of 5 to 15% most years--putting them outside is OUT. I did put some onions in my garden shed this year and they dried fine there, but it was a very dry year and those were small, late-planted onions.

First time drying hard neck garlic for me.  I simply put them in a paper bag and hung the bag in my kitchen for them to dry.
Please tell me what might be wrong with this method....

Donna Grace wrote:First time drying hard neck garlic for me.  I simply put them in a paper bag and hung the bag in my kitchen for them to dry.
Please tell me what might be wrong with this method....

I don't know if it's *wrong* but I might be concerned about getting enough airflow when it's in a bag. I've found that if I tie my garlic in too-large bunches, it can mold on the interior while I'm trying to dry it.