We harvested our garlic this week.

We were a little late this year. It’s best to let garlic dry out a bit before pulling it, and since we were getting rain fairly regularly I kept putting it off. The problem with leaving it in the ground too long is that the papery wrapper of the garlic bulb is made up of the green leaves that remain on the plant. If too many of the leaves yellow, that wrapper doesn’t exist, and the garlic will not keep long. Luckily most of our harvest looks great.

I’ll let these plants dry out, then trim the leaves and store the garlic in a cool, dark spot. The best of the heads will be used as seed for next year’s crop. We’ll eat our way through the rest over the winter, while that seed does its magic outside.

When I first began to garden I heard the advice to grow what you eat. Sure, I thought, but I’ll eat anything if it’s growing in my yard. That’s true, but thinking about what you ate before you had a garden – what you buy – is still the best way forward. If you grow what you eat regularly, as we do garlic, you’re not just growing tasty treats, you’re saving yourself money you would normally spend at the grocery store.