Oh, my! Garlic!

 I found out I've been planting my garlic in the wrong season all this time. I would plant it in the spring, with the onions. No. It wants to be planted in the fall.

Starting string

So, this time I did it right. I bought several garlic bulbs last fall and planted them in the triangle bed. When I harvested them today, there were a lot of other plants around that looked suspiciously like garlic. What happened to my leeks? They sure look more like garlic. What about those "flowers" in the south flowerbed? Isn't that -- oh, my! Garlic.  What happened?  I don't know if the birds planted them or if I did something in my sleep, but Wow! Do I have garlic! (The shiny round circle, by the way, is the electric meter on the back porch.)

With this much garlic to dry, how would I hang it? The stalks are not as flexible as onions. I cannot braid them. Hm... I could tie them but the stalks might fall out of the bundles. If I could just chain them together somehow. Hm.. Oh! Chain! Chain stitch! I'll crochet them together!!

Chain stitching each stalk

I began by laying a length of cotton yarn on a table. I then laid a handful of garlic over the yarn. Each time I picked up a stalk, I'd work a chain stitch around the stalk and then go to the next one.  When the garlic was a good handful, I cut the yarn and tied it to itself to create a bundle. This kept the garlic together and created a way to hang it for drying. It works best to make this tie about 2/3 the way up the stalk so that it hangs well when placed on a nail.

Bundle stitched together

My back porch has vinyl siding. That was too brittle to hold drying nails easily, so Leon helped my place some of the left-over lath from the tomato trellis across the wall between the back  door and the kitchen window. We nails into the lath every 6-8 inches apart. I hooked the crocheted ties over the nails and hung the garlic to dry. When I feel it is fully dry, I'll cut the bulbs off the ends and store them inside in net bags. The tops and the cotton string will go to the compost pile.