Premature garlic evacution

Being impetuous and sometimes carless I decided to harvest the garlic early, in fact what proved to be about a month too early.  Perhaps this years rain had something to do with this, I remembered harvesting my garlic in May last year and I wanted to use the bed for our summer garden.

Green stalks had just began to turn brown and flop sideways in a convincing manner; a sign from Mother Nature that it was pleading to be plucked out, braided and dried to be turned to delicious savory additions to our daily meals.

Digging carefully around each cluster, feeling anticipatory excitement like finding buried treasures, each one a different shape and hue of violet.

I discovered violet garlic on our trip to Provence last summer it is a milder tasting garlic with a violet hue to be less acidic tasting.

With one foot on the wooden edge of the bed I braced myself and pulled.

Beautiful, aromatic and sadly a bit premature.  

Braided and cleaned of soil I lay the little fragrant clumps out to dry noting their soft and damp quality, convincing myself that they would dry out.  I left them to dry out on a table in the fresh air checking they were not becoming little savory delights for our woodland creatures.

A month later,  the garlic has now dried and is a gigantic stinky clump that will sustain us in to the late Autumn, unless I continue to give them away...