A few weeks ago I shared with you how to cure your own garlic. It’s really quite easy! All it takes is a little patience 🙂 Well… I’ve been patient and my garlic was finally cured and ready to store just a few days ago! I was so excited!
You’ve probably seen pretty Pinterest pictures of braided garlic and onions in a nice rustic kitchen. I would LOVE to braid my garlic! But the thing is, there are two types of garlic; hardneck and softneck. Softneck is “braidable” because of it’s soft neck. Hardneck, however, well you get the picture.
How Do you Store Hardneck Garlic?
The normal way to store hardneck garlic is just to trim the stalks so they are about two inches long. Then you can keep them in a cool, dry area until you need them. But I thought that was pretty boring, so I searched “how to braid hardneck garlic” on Google.
While you can’t braid hardneck garlic, you can bunch it up and use some twine (or yarn in my case because I didn’t have twine) to weave it together to create the same effect. Yay!
Time to Braid!
I ended up finding a wonderful tutorial video by Ali’s Organics that walks you through the whole process. It worked wonderfully!
After I watched Ali’s video a few times, I decided to give it a go, and tie up my garlic. We originally planted sixteen bulbs, but a few got ripped out by chipmunks or squirrels, and one had a little damage so it didn’t cure properly. That left me with thirteen bulbs.
Was Tying Up My Garlic Hard?
I made a reel to show you my process of tying up my garlic, which you can watch here. I apologize for the poor lighting at the end of the video, a huge storm rolled in just as I was finishing up!
Overall, tying up my garlic was super easy! It might be easier to have someone to help hold the bunch tight while you wrap the twine around, but other than that, I found it really rewarding! The best part is cutting off all the stalks at the end and having a tidy bunch of garlic that looks so beautiful!
Will You Be Braiding Your Garlic?
Let me know if you grew softneck or hardneck garlic this year, and how you plan to store it! Comment below, tag my @sweetgumspot on Instagram, or email me at sweetgumspot@gmail.com with your pictures! I can’t wait to see your beautiful work!