How best to keep garlic until spring
Garlic is grown for its medicinal properties and taste. But in order to use this storehouse of nutrients in winter, you need to know how to preserve garlic until spring.
The shelf life of garlic depends on the time of harvesting the bulbs: overripe heads are poorly preserved.
To preserve garlic until spring, keep only healthy bulbs.
The harvesting time for winter and spring garlic is different. Spring garlic should be harvested from mid-August. The winter variety ripens earlier, and it can be dug up from the end of July. It is best not to water the beds 2 weeks before harvest.
Preparing garlic for storage
In order to better preserve garlic until spring, there are three main stages of harvest preparation.
- Drying. It is better to do this for at least a week right in the garden under the sun, since the sun’s rays rid the garlic of bacteria and fungi. But you can put it in another warm, dry, ventilated place.
- Sorting. Sort out the crop, leaving only healthy bulbs: whole, without rot and black spots.
- Cleaning and trimming. Remove the top dirty scales, cut the roots to a length of about 3 mm. Remove the stems, leaving a tail 5-10 cm, but only if you will not braid the garlic for the winter.
If you burn the roots over the fire, the garlic will not sprout.
Winter and spring garlic require different storage conditions. Summer garlic is good to keep warm: from +16 to + 20 ° C with a humidity of 50-60%. The optimal conditions for the winter variety are temperatures from +2 to + 4 ° С and humidity 70-80%.
For spring garlic, compliance with these conditions is sufficient. There are several ways to preserve winter garlic until spring:
- Pour about 3 cm of salt or flour into a glass container, add garlic, add salt or flour again. And so on until the end. The components must be absolutely dry. Keep the container open in a cool dry place;
- you can also cover the garlic with ash or sawdust, but in wooden or cardboard boxes with holes so that there is air access from all sides;
- Place the garlic in small, tight cloth bags filled with onion peels. Place the bags in a dry and cool place;
- coat the garlic with paraffin. To do this, melt the paraffin and dip the dry heads into it one by one. Pack them in linen bags and hide in a dry place.
Well-dried, disinfected garlic can simply be wrapped in small nets or braided and kept hanging. You cannot pack it in plastic bags or other sealed containers – this will make it moldy and rot.
The general condition for all methods of storing winter garlic is one thing: place it in a dark, dry and cool place. During the entire storage period, it is required to review the safety of the garlic and remove the spoiled heads.