No Dig Garlic: Planting, Harvesting, and Drying Garlic Using the Ruth Stout Method

hey guys Derek here from back to reality to last fall after our first successful season of permaculture gardening we decided to use the Ruth stout method to put in a two hundred and sixty plant garlic crop and now ten months later it's finally time to reap the rewards but before we get to the ins and outs of harvesting and drying garlic we figured we'd give you a quick recap of how we actually planted it in the first place here in Canada where our northern climate means a shorter growing season garlic is typically planted in November right before the first frost this gives our plants enough time to actually sprout their roots before going dormant for winter and gives them a really good head start whenever the ground finally thaws in early spring since most critters don't really care much for the pungent odor and flavor of garlic we decided to plant the crop outside of our garden fence there's no sense wasting all that valuable space on something that doesn't really need any protection anyway and with the intention of expanding upon our Ruth stout inspired hey only gardens we decided to use that same method for our garlic as well so we started out by mowing a section of our field adjacent to the garden and spread out a layer of cardboard to hopefully smother the unwanted weeds we found that by wetting the cardboard with the hose it helped to stop it from blowing away in the breeze and it would also provide a bit of moisture to aid in germination next we spread out rows of compost and eventually inserted individual garlic cloves pointy side up every six inches at a depth of about two to three times their own length finally once all the cloves were planted we covered each of the rows in about eight inches of spoiled hay and the walkways in between with a layer of fall leaves all of this mulch would help to insulate the area from the winter temperatures continue to smother the weeds in the spring and slowly release nutrients as it began to break down over time that was it now all we had to do was wait but our curiosity got the better of us during a midwinter thaw so we had to take a peek and much to our excitement underneath the frozen hay we managed to find one of the garlic cloves complete with tiny white roots so far so good the next view came in late April as the ground was beginning to warm up but this time it wasn't us breaking through the hay to take a peek it was garlic in the form of tiny green sprouts over the next few months the garlic continued to grow into a hierarchy of tall thin leaves and eventually they spreaded escapes now garlic scapes are basically just long curly stems terminated by a tight green flower bud and if left to their own devices these buds would eventually bloom into beautiful clusters of white pink and purple flowers but most garlic scapes never actually make it to that point because instead they end up in the kitchen you see most garlic growers actually remove the scapes as soon as they appear because if they were left to flower then they would actually draw nutrients and energy away from the production of larger and more profitable garlic bulbs plus despite being a simple by-product garlic scapes are currently considered to be something of a gourmet ingredient and pound-for-pound they can sometimes bring in as much income as the garlic bulbs themselves they have the same flavor and can be used in the same way but they're a little bit easier to work with so we harvested our scapes shared some with some friends and family and eagerly devoured the rest now there's a couple of ways to tell when the garlic itself is ready to be harvested one way is to simply begin pulling a plant or two and take a look at the size of the bulbs if they're nice and large and full then chances are you're ready to harvest the rest of the crop but if not then wait a week or so and try again but depending on the size of your crop this trial and error method could diminish your yield pretty quickly so we found that the better way to determine what's happening under the ground is by examining what's happening above it so in the case of hardneck garlic like the type that we grew you'll want to see lower leaves that have turned brown and completely shriveled up that's a good indication that the garlic is starting to reach its peak but you still want the upper leaves to be mostly green because once all of the leaves have shriveled then your garlic bulb has probably gotten a little too large and started to split open in the ground which makes it way harder to preserve for long-term storage so there's kind of a fine line from what we've read your best bet is to look for about 1/3 of the leaves to be brown and shriveled and the remaining 2/3 to still be nice and green but if your plants get past 50% shriveled then it's probably best to harvest them immediately so once we determine that our garlic was ready all that was left was to get pulling and to do that we needed a wheelbarrow for collecting them and a garden fork plus some excited energy doesn't hurt either we began by following the common recommendation of loosening up the soil prior to pulling the garlic out the effort typically required to pull garlic from hard-packed soil is enough to damage the leaves and delicate papery cover on the bulbs both of which are needed for proper preservation we'll get to that in a moment however possibly due to the way that our garlic beds were created we found that this step was entirely unnecessary our bulbs pulled out with hardly any effort at all so once we got started we had the entire crop harvested in less than 10 minutes now to haul these back up to the cabin and begin the drying process but why do we need to dry garlic anyway well technically we don't fresh pick garlic is still perfectly safe to eat in fact we tried a bunch and it was delicious but unfortunately due to the moisture content fresh garlic spoils pretty quickly so much like dehydrating fruit drying garlic helps to preserve it for long-term storage but luckily the process is pretty simple most people just hang it in a dry area with lots of airflow and no exposure to direct sunlight this can include a barn a garage a carport or in our case our covered porch the porch is perfect because up near the ceiling it stays covered from the rain it stays in shadow throughout the day but it still has a nice breeze which will naturally help in the drying process so we started by screwing metal hooks into the ceiling and then connecting them with twine next we group the garlic into bunches of five and tied them together leaving a loop for hanging finally we use the loops to string the garlic bunches onto the twine and then all that was left was to wait for up to four weeks for the garlic to dry luckily we've already done the waiting so you don't have to the garlic has been hanging here now for a little over a month which means that all of the bulbs should have soaked up the last bit of energy and nutrients from the stems in the leaves and the papery covering should have dried out to form a protective barrier to test this we simply brought one of them inside and cut the stem if there was any visible moisture content it would be pretty obvious right away luckily ours was nice and dry and ready to be prepped for storage but we'll leave that for next time oh yeah one more thing if you watched our previous video back whenever we first planted the garlic you may recall that we also conducted a smaller side experiment by simply tossing some of the cloves of garlic on to the compost rather than actually inserting it we figured that if that works for potatoes it might just work for garlic as well and believe it or not we were right all of the tossed cloves sprouted and produced complete garlic but while we had a range of sizes throughout the crop these 20 were among the smallest so it would seem as though actually inserting the garlic does produce a better yield but it's still comforting to know that it works either way nature's pretty good at finding ways to survive so we don't always have to stress about doing things perfectly if you plant them a little too deep or not quite deep enough you will still get results so just remember at the end of the day what's most important is that you do it not how you do it see you guys again soon

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Views: 1,033,456

Rating: 4.9471402 out of 5

Keywords: homesteading, homestead, garden, gardening, garlic, ruth stout, permaculture, no dig, no till, self sustainable, sel sufficient, organic, fresh food, food, growing food, back to reality, back to basics, back to nature, animation

Id: uhpvMg5d1OM

Length: 7min 36sec (456 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 05 2017