Yup, you get another round of garlic harvests today!

You can see that the color of these two beds has clearly changed from blue-green to brown-grey-green. We are getting close on most of the garlic and shallots! Only a couple more weeks, I think.

We harvested 2 varieties of garlic this morning. The first was the ‘Persian Star’ that I really wanted to do well, but looked pretty insignificant from above-ground. Well, sadly, the below-ground bulbs aren’t much more impressive than the weak-looking tops were. They aren’t as small as I was afraid they might be, but the one bulb on the right here is pretty much as large as they get.

We also harvested the ‘Ferganskij’ garlic, the other variety that had pretty wimpy tops compared to other varieties. The bulbs are pretty small, but I think consistently larger than some of the smaller ‘Persian Star’ bulbs. Definitely not a winner compared to some of the other varieties we’ve already harvested.

We harvested 3 of the 4 varieties of shallots today. We left the Dutch Yellow shallots, the multiplier onions, and the elephant garlic.

The ‘Sante’ shallots were by far the largest, but they didn’t have as many bulbs per clump. The bulb sizes were also pretty variable. Don’t you love that red-purple color though?

The French Red shallots were bountiful! We had more rows of them planted to begin with, but they yielded well! The color isn’t as vivid as the Sante, nor are the bulbs as large. They are very consistently sized though.

Last, but not least, are the Grey shallots. These are the heirloom shallots that are supposed to have the best flavor. The sheer number of bulbs from each clump is quite impressive, but the size of the bulbs is much smaller than the other varieties. I guess that is probably a personal preference – more small bulbs or fewer large bulbs. I would guess most people prefer fewer large bulbs, hence the direction that newer varieties seem to be going.