How to Harvest, Cure, and Store Garlic and Onions - Ep. 256

Karin Velez [00:00:00]:
Your summer garlic and onion harvest can last you through the spring of next year if you give it the attention and the time that it needs. Right now. Onions and garlic are staples in many kitchens, so it only makes sense to grow them ourselves in the home garden. But how do we make them last? If you've had even mild success with your garlic or your onion crops this year, there are a few steps to take to be sure that they don't get soft or moldy before you get the chance to use them up. So today on Just Grow Something, we're talking proper harvest techniques, curing, and how to store your garlic and onions. So the hard work that you put in and the long wait from when you planted them to when they mature is worth your while. We want to make sure those goodies stay firm and intact all the way through until it's time to harvest again next year or until we eat them all, whichever comes first. Let's dig in.

Karin Velez [00:01:24]:
So thank you to all of you who have reached out to let me know that you donated to Loveland Acres Farm after last week's episode. I truly, truly appreciate you and I hope that we made a little bit of an impact for Scarlet and the work that she's doing up there in Wisconsin. It's never too late to contribute to the cause by going tolovelandacre farms.org and heading to her shop to make a purchase or give a little something towards introducing children with disabilities to growing food and connecting with farm animals while fighting racism at the same time. So we are in full harvest mode here. The garlic has already come out. The onions are starting probably this week it looks like. So now seemed like a perfect time to talk about when and and how to harvest these guys out of our gardens and what to do with them after we pull them. It's not enough to get them grown and harvested. There are some special considerations for long term storage, especially if once you look at your harvest you realize that, yeah, you may have grown enough to feed a small army. It's easy to get carried away with garlic and onions and that's okay. As long as we're using them, it's not a problem. So let's start by talking about when and how to harvest them with garlic.

Karin Velez [00:02:52]:
The timing is when you see the garlic and roughly half of the leaves are yellow or starting to turn brown. And if you're growing a soft neck variety, they likely are starting to flop over at the neck. So this is going to depend on the variety that you're growing and where you are growing. For some of you, this could be as early as the beginning of June. For us here, we started to see the first few soft necks start to sort of flop over about 10 days to two weeks or so ago, so around the middle of June. And then the majority of them looked like they were ready to go just this past week. And so we went ahead and finished digging all of them. This went for our hardneck also.

Karin Velez [00:03:40]:
But the hardneck are a little bit different. Generally speaking, when you see that first scape come up, and if you don't know what the scape is, it is basically the floral stem that starts to come out of the center of the hardneck garlic, and you'll see a tiny little, what looks like a flower bloom on the end of it. Those should be cut off and you can use those. Garlic scapes are fantastic to eat. But generally speaking, if you are growing those hard necks about three to four weeks later is when your hardneck variety will be ready to harvest. For me, my hard neck generally are always much smaller than the soft neck, and they are usually ready right around the same time. And so again, with the hard neck, I don't usually experience any of that sort of flopping over like what you see with the soft neck. The soft neck are going to act very, very similar to what we see in our onions.

Karin Velez [00:04:34]:
And we'll talk about that here in a second. For some of you, this may not happen until July or into August, depending on where you are. And this is making the assumption that all of this garlic was planted in the fall. If you plant garlic in the spring, when it's going to be ready is really going to depend a lot on your climate and whether or not that garlic was able to be vernalized, meaning you were able to chill it before you planted it. So there's a kind of a little bit of a nuance there when you're talking about spring planted garlic. But for the fall planted garlic, it usually anywhere between the beginning of June and the middle of August is usually where you'll see these being ready. The heads of garlic should actually be Left in the ground as long as possible in order to be able to kind of get that maximum bulb size. Your garlic bulbs will actually double in just that very end stage of growth in the final few weeks.

Karin Velez [00:05:36]:
But we don't want them to be in the ground for so long that the cloves begin to separate, because those bulbs are not going to be able to be stored very well. So that would be something where if you dig up your bulbs and you start to see that they are kind of separating away from the center, those are the ones that you are going to want to use first or find an alternate storage method. And we'll talk about that towards the end of the episode. I actually had this problem last season and it was mainly in my hardneck garlic. And I don't remember exactly why. I would have to go back and look in my garden journal to see what it was that caused us to harlequ harvest that garlic late and for those bulbs to already be sort of separating the cloves to be separating in those bulbs. But I, I will say that they were not candidates for long term storage. So those were, those were eaten first.

Karin Velez [00:06:29]:
So it's, it's a little bit of a, a guessing game. You kind of have to keep an eye on them because once they start to come ready, they all kind of come ready at once. And you need to get them out of the ground. The easiest way and the most effective way to do this is to just loosen the soil up, either with, you know, a hand trowel or a fork of some sort, to be able to get down underneath those roots and gently lift the bulbs up out of the soil. We want to avoid pulling on the garlic by the neck because that could actually damage that neck. And we want those to be intact while we are curing them. So get down low and then pop them up out of the soil. That is the best way to go ahead and get them out.

Karin Velez [00:07:16]:
Now for your onions, we want to wait until most of the tops have fallen over. And once that happens, those bulbs are mature. So it quite literally they will sort of like their neck will just sort of break and flop over. And that's when you know they're ready to pour hole. You'll be able to know this is coming. I mean, you should be able to kind of keep an eye on your, on your onions as they're developing and you should be able to see those bulbs forming. They shouldn't be so deep in the ground that you can't see this happening, because that's going to Restrict the growth. And once those tops fall over, those bulbs are not going to get any bigger.

Karin Velez [00:07:53]:
So don't wait thinking, oh well, it's not to the right size yet, there is going to not going to be any additional growth there. The same thing goes as a side note, when your onions bolt. So if your onions start to put up a flower stalk before you think they are ready to harvest, that is usually an indicator of a couple of different things. The weather patterns have probably been a little bit funky and it has caused them to be a little bit stressed or maybe your soil has compacted around them and that is causing the bulb to, to be stressed. In any case, it is feeling like it needs to reproduce and so it's going to send that flower stock up and this is not going to be a candidate number one for long term storage. Number two, those bulbs aren't going to get any bigger either. So you have two options at that point when they start to bolt. Number one is just pull the whole onion.

Karin Velez [00:08:50]:
You can use it like what we consider a spring onion, right? So you can use the tops like green onions. You can use the bottom like a regular onion. No matter how big it has developed and you know, and then you're good to go. That's fine. If you have too many of them that are bolting and sometimes in some seasons this will happen, then you can just pop the seed top or the flower off the top of where that stem is bolting and leave them in the ground for a little while until you get to them. They're not going to get any bigger, but they're also, you know, not going to rot because you had to harvest them and then you didn't get around to eating them right. So it gives you a little bit of a sort of in the garden storage for a couple of weeks, eventually they are going to have to come out because if they're just sitting there and they're not really growing, then they're trying to expend energy to maybe put up more flower stalks, which generally isn't going to happen. So it's just, it's a, it's kind of a stasis at that point and they can't sit in that condition for too long.

Karin Velez [00:09:52]:
In, in either case, when you pull those out, they, those need to be used right away. Those are not something that can store because that center part of that bulb of the onion that has now sprouted, you got access to water getting in there from the top of that flower stalk. Especially if you've topped that flower off. It's also using or has been trying to use the energy from within that, that bulb to do that flowering process. And so that's going to cause the center of it to get soft. So use those right away. The harvesting of your onions is pretty much the same way as what you would do with your garlic. We want to dig with a fork or with a trowel of some sort.

Karin Velez [00:10:33]:
You can give them a little gentle pull because in the best case scenario, in most instances, those onion bulbs should be slightly popped up out of the ground. Sometimes it happens, especially if you are planting fall sets or sets in the fall to overwinter to come up in the spring like we do. Depending on what your weather conditions were over the winter time, it's possible that these guys have settled down a little bit. That is one sort of caveat to planting fall planted onions and harvesting them in the spring. And I did have several instances of that and those ones actually did bolt and so they got pulled early. So just like with our garlic, we don't be grabbing the top and trying to yank it out because that can cause damage. We, we want those tops on for the curing process. So a gentle wiggle can usually get them out if they are, if they are up out of the soil well enough, or again getting down there with a trowel or a fork to kind of pop it up.

Karin Velez [00:11:32]:
It's also a good idea too with both onions and garlic if you can wait for like a dry weather period to harvest these. Rather when you than when you've just recently had a rain or it's very wet out. This is just going to help you to reduce those disease risks for while you are curing them. As a new rose bush mama, I have been keeping an eye out for pests and diseases in my plant from heirloom roses as it goes through its first full season here. The weather has been crazy wet and the humidity is high and that's usually the perfect breeding ground for things like black spot. And surprisingly, I haven't seen any problems thus far. But if this is something that you've struggled with, it helps to be sure that we are watering at the base of the plant to keep the foliage dry, removing any infected leaves so the fungus doesn't spread. And don't compost those, please get rid of them and be sure to clean our pruners between cuttings to avoid spreading it to other plants.

Karin Velez [00:12:29]:
Now, I've also been watching out for aphids, which are notoriously attracted to roses, which I did see early on on my plant, but I knocked them down with a spray from the hose and waited for the ladybugs to come in and do their job, which they did. But there are sprays that you can use and beneficial insects that you can purchase if you have a lot of roses and a lot of these issues. In fact, heirloom roses.com has a selection of recommended treatment items on their website, including fungicides, natural insecticides, and even a beneficial insect subscription. They truly do care about the fate of your roses and they are ready to help it is not too late to get your own beautiful rose bush settled in this season by going to heirloomroses.com and using code just grow to save 20% at checkout. I have bookmarked several new varieties to add to my garden this year because I've been so impressed with how healthy and resilient mine is even while being grown in a container in a very disease and pest prone location. Heirloomroses.com with code JUSTGROW at checkout to save 20% on your new rose bush. The link is in the show Notes so let's talk about the curing. What are we doing when we are curing an onion or a garlic? The curing is just the process of drying out those skins and the necks on the garlic or the onion so that those bulbs are sealed, which is going to reduce the ability of moisture being able to get in there and it's also going to reduce the disease problems.

Karin Velez [00:14:03]:
So for garlic and and really for onions too, I mean you could do these both the same way. You want to kind of spread them out either on a rack where you can hang them from their stems or upside down. You want to do this in a very warm area. So for both garlic and onions you're looking at between 75 and 85 ish Fahrenheit. You want a dry, well ventilated area. Now if you are somewhere where it's not super humid, you could do this outside. Okay, you can do it on a deck, you could do it in a barn, you could do it in a shed. So long as there is plenty of airflow and it's not super humid, you should be okay to do it this way.

Karin Velez [00:14:48]:
In my area, this is not going to work very well. There have been years where I've been able to lay them out on racks on like my back deck in the shade and I had enough airflow and the humidity was low enough that we would be able to dry them out, the onions specifically, but typically speaking I end up taking all of my garlic and all of my onions into our basement. And I put them on the racks in my seed starting room, and I turn the fans on and I let them just get that really good airflow. The temperature is warm enough down there during the summertime that it's. It's warm enough to be able to cure them. It does take them a little bit longer down there because it is on the cooler, cooler side of that temperature range, but typically. So, you know, let's put it this way. If you have those ideal temperatures, right, it can be in that 75 to 85.

Karin Velez [00:15:44]:
It could take as little as 10 days for your garlic to cure, probably closer to two weeks for your onions, in my instance. In that condition, it generally takes me like four weeks for my garlic and right around the same amount of time for my onions. Really what you're looking for in both of these is you want the necks to be dry, almost papery, and you want those outer skins to be very, very dry. You want those heads to be nice and tight, and you want that paper around the outside to be nice and tight as well. You can braid either your onions or your garlic or both, and hang them and allow them to cure, cure that way. Just be mindful of the humidity level. Make sure that you have really good airflow going. If it's just one or two braids and you're hanging them in your kitchen and you plan to use them over the next, you know, several weeks to, you know, to two months, then maybe it's not necessary to go through this whole drying process.

Karin Velez [00:16:46]:
As a matter of fact, if you, you know, only grew enough of your garlic and onions for you to get through, through them over the next four to six weeks, then you don't have to go through this process at all, really. You could just, you know, cut the stems and store them in your refrigerator. And that's going to hold them for however long it takes you to get through them over the next four to six weeks. But for anything longer than that six week kind of period, I absolutely recommend going through the curing process to make sure that they are fully dry and that we, you know, keep that disease and that moisture from infiltrating while they're in storage. So once we have our garlic and our onions dried, they are cured. Now we want to trim. So you want to take your garlic and snip those stems about an inch or so above the bulb, and then we want to trim off the roots. Same thing goes with the onions.

Karin Velez [00:17:42]:
You want to cut that Neck to about, you know, Half inch to 1 inch. Trim off those roots, remove any of the outer skins that have any kind of damage to them. We don't want to be storing anything that is bruised or, you know, otherwise off in any way. We want to brush off the soil, any leftover dirt or anything that is on our onions or your garlic. You do not want to rinse them though. We don't want to invite any kind of rot to the party. And that's all getting them wet is going to do, right? It's going to invite that rot. So don't wash them, just knock the soil off.

Karin Velez [00:18:14]:
And in terms of what we're going to store, we only want to store are sort of perfect specimens. Okay. So if you damaged any of these bulbs while you were pulling them out of the garden and this happens, you know, you go to stick your trowel down in the soil to pop them up and oops, you realize that you actually jabbed it because it was a large specimen or whatever. It's okay. That's just the ones that you're going to eat first. Any damage or soft spots is going to increase that rotation risk. So we don't want to be putting those in with the ones that we're storing because as soon as one starts to have problems, then it's going to spread them to the others. We don't want that.

Karin Velez [00:18:57]:
We don't want to invite any diseases or anything in. So only store your most perfect specimens. How should you be storing these? So the temperature and the humidity are really the most important things when it comes to storing garlic and onions for your garlic ambient temperature just out in your regular household, you know, temperature 68 to 85, you know, Fahrenheit or whatever, they'll keep for about one or two months without any kind of special consideration. Garlic is pretty hearty that way. But if you're looking for long term storage, so, and we're talking like your garlic can store for four to nine months or longer. You want them to be a bit cooler. And I will tell you that I have experienced this firsthand. I have made braids from both my garlic and my onions, but specifically my garlic to hang in my kitchen.

Karin Velez [00:19:55]:
And again, my experience was, okay, well, a couple of months, you know, your garlic can store in a little container with some holes in it, you know, the cute little ceramic, you know, garlic pots or whatever, and there would be no problem. And so I had it hanging on my wall very decoratively and figured once I went through all my other garlic, okay, then I would start to use that one last because I liked the way that it looked. By the time I got through all of my other fresh garlic and went to go use the garlic that had been hanging on the wall, they looked like they were beautiful intact bulbs or heads of garlic, but they were completely empty. They had shriveled within their little, you know, paper casings, and there was nothing left of them. And I don't know how long it had been that way, probably for months. So it's still hanging on my wall because it still looks like a big, beautiful braid of garlic, but there is nothing in the inside of these things, and it's been there for years. So just know if you're going to keep these or you're going to try to store these for longer than about two months or so, you're going to want to be able to store them in a much, much colder environment. So realistic conditions for home storage, you're looking at, you know, between 50 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit or 10 Celsius, 18 Celsius.

Karin Velez [00:21:14]:
Right. With a humidity of around 50 to 60%. So an open container, like a mesh bag or a wire basket, that's going to help with. To circulate the air and keep the moisture and the sort of odors away. So what does this look like, a basement maybe, that has that type of level of humidity and that temperature range. If you have a cool closet somewhere that's kind of dark, but you can still get the airflow, that might work okay for you. In commercial storage, we generally are looking at keeping them at temperatures around 30 to 32 Fahrenheit. So we are very close to that freezing mark, and we're looking at about 60 to 70% relative humidity and that good airflow.

Karin Velez [00:21:54]:
We know obviously that most home gardeners can't really achieve that. So your refrigerator might end up being the best place. You know, if you don't have a spot in your home or in a garage or in a basement that has those cooler temperatures with that level of humidity, then you may decide that putting your garlic into your crisper drawer in your refrigerator is the best place. I'm going to talk about a few other alternatives to this here towards the end. But just know if you want to store those cloves or those heads whole, this might be the only option for you for anything longer than about eight weeks or so with your onions. We're looking at cool and dry conditions, and the cooler you can get it, the better. So again, a, you know, unheated garage that doesn't technically get to freezing. So ideally we're looking at between 32 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but we want low humidity.

Karin Velez [00:22:56]:
We also want to avoid storing our onions near anything that gives off ethylene. So that would be apples or potatoes. So you know those really cute like wooden bins that have the labels on the front of them that used to be meant to put in your kitchen and one was labeled for potatoes and one was labeled for onions. Yeah, really bad idea. All that's going to do is make your onions go bad more quickly if you're stirring them near your potato potatoes. So we want to also avoid storing our onions any place where the temperatures are going to fluctuate really dramatically. So, you know, if you're storing them in the long term in your kitchen where typically it's going to get warmer when you're cooking and then it's going to get cooler when you're not home in the, in the winter time or whatever, that's probably not the best place to be storing your onions. So a cool basement.

Karin Velez [00:23:52]:
So if you have a basement or even a, a root cellar that stays much cooler, that is a really good place to store them long term. Onions need that low humidity though, to stay fresh. So it likely wouldn't work real well in my basement because our basement, again, we're humid here. So even as we get into the winter time, it's still a little bit humid down there. So not the ideal place for us to store our onions. I generally put them out in. It's going to sound weird, but they go in my gym because our gym is on a, a room that is like attached to outside of the house and it stays cool and it stays dry out there. So that's actually the best place for me to store our onions.

Karin Velez [00:24:32]:
Just remember the low humidity and a cooler temperature. Now can you store your onions and your garlic in the same place? Yeah, if you can sort of match that like 60% humidity and around 32 degrees, then yeah, that's a good place to stay. Store both your garlic and your onions. But you may not be, you know, super accurate unless you've got a hygrometer that's telling you exactly how much humidity is in there and you know, a thermometer telling you what the temperature is all the time. You may not go to all that fuss. Okay. Do your best in a cool semi dry area in your house. Make sure that you're storing them like in mesh bags or in open bins, anything that's breathable.

Karin Velez [00:25:17]:
Again, those Braided bunches here are going to be just fine. If you've got them hanging up, they just may not be there for the long term. Just make sure you're avoiding anything that is sealed, especially if it's plastic. No, like sealed plastic bags. All that's going to do is trap the moisture. So you know, a cool dry basement or root cellar, something that's got some good ventilation. Also some rodent control if that's an issue for you. Your refrigerator is okay short term.

Karin Velez [00:25:44]:
So if you can keep them in your kitchen for maybe the first two months, right. And then we know, okay, anything beyond that, they need better storage conditions and then you move them into your refrigerator, well then that's going to probably give you at least another month or two. So now we're at four months. So even if you don't have that ideal storage temperature and in environment that you need, you can still get your stuff to at least hang on for a good four months by using a combination of methods. If you've been watching the whole tariff situation here in the US with the on again, off again, this month it's 110%. Oh, this month we reduced it to 30% and on and on. You likely have decided against making any major purchases that might involve something being shipped in from overseas. I know I have.

Karin Velez [00:26:38]:
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Karin Velez [00:27:26]:
Planterboxdirect.com with code JUSTGROW10 to save 10% and get free shipping. On my favorite raised garden planters. The link is in the show notes. How long these can store is going to be based on like their type and their variety. So in terms of garlic, you know I mentioned we grow both hard neck and soft neck number one. That's because where we live. Sometimes the winters are super, super harsh and sometimes not so much. So I plant both just to cover my bases because, you know, hardneck really needs that vernalization.

Karin Velez [00:28:05]:
The soft tech maybe not as much. And the soft neck cannot always take as much in terms of the really severe winters, but the hard neck can. So I grow both and that means that they store differently too. They have different growth habits, they have different ability to be able to be stored. So your soft neck actually stores the longest. These are the ones that are great for braids. They generally can store between six, six and 12 months. So if I've got soft neck varieties, I am usually finishing up using them probably, oh, the end of March, beginning of April, and then of course I'm starting to harvest again in June.

Karin Velez [00:28:46]:
So there's not too much of a gap there in terms of my actual bulbs. The hardneck, it tends to last maybe three to six months or so. The reason that you might choose choose hardneck over soft neck is the hardneck tends to have a much stronger flavor to it and you also get those scapes. So if you have the the option to plant both, great. But sometimes it may just depend on where you you're gardening as to which type you have to grow. I will link to the garlic episode in the show notes so that you can go back and figure out maybe which one you should be growing. The same thing goes with onions. Your very sweet and very mild types are generally not candidates for really long term storage.

Karin Velez [00:29:31]:
They'll store for a few months. So think about, you know, your, your Walla Walla onions or your Vidalias if you're in Vidalia County, Georgia. Thank you very much. Those are going to be stored for a few months. The sugars are just a little bit too high in those specimens for them to be able to really be stored for too long. The really pungent onions are your better storage types. These can last, you know, 10 to 12 months, even longer. And so these are the ones that are really good for that long term storage.

Karin Velez [00:30:02]:
I will also link to all of the onion episodes as well so that you have an idea of which ones are best for you. You also of course, are taking into consideration where you're growing. So whether you have to grow long day, short day or intermediate day, and sometimes that limits the, the type of onion that you can grow. So depending on where you are gardening, you know, it might limit the varieties that you are able to grow. So just keep that in mind when you're choosing the varieties and, and trying to determine how Many of each type to grow so that you know which ones are going to last you longer and which ones you're going to have to use up right away. So just to recap, right, we want to harvest when the tops start to die back a little bit on our garlic, when the soft neck starts to flop over, and then our onions, when those tops start to flop over, that is when it's time to harvest them. We want to harvest carefully. We don't want to damage any of these bulbs as we're popping them out.

Karin Velez [00:31:05]:
So make sure we're digging down under those roots and we're just kind of popping them out of the soil. Cure them in a warm, dry, ventilated spot, a shot shady spot outside, if that's where you're doing this. Your garlic may take, you know, a. A few, you know, 10 days on up to four weeks. Your onions could take two to four weeks. It just all depends on what environment you are, you know, curing them in. Once they are cured and they are dry, you want to trim them and clean them. So cut those necks, trim off the roots, brush off the dirt, and then store them in breathable containers, preferably, you know, someplace that's cool.

Karin Velez [00:31:40]:
Cool with low humidity. So for your garlic, 50 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit is fine. At a 60%, you know, humidity level, your onions definitely like a cooler 32 to 40. If you can store your garlic in the same place as your onions at that lower temperature, then they're going to do just fine for you. Just remember, when you put these into storage, we want to make sure that we're going through them at least once a month. So to check and make sure that there aren't any bulbs that are showing signs of decay or that are sprouting. So the ones, if they're showing decay, get them out of there and. And, you know, throw them in the compost pile or whatever.

Karin Velez [00:32:21]:
We don't want them infecting the other specimens. But if you have ones that start to sprout, it's fine for you to go ahead and use them. They have to be used right away. If they all are starting to show signs of sprouting, that's the time. Get them out of your cool storage, wherever you've got them, and throw them into a refrigerator to see if you can slow that process down until you get a chance to go through and use them. Okay. Putting in the time at harvest to cure these guys does pay off. Okay.

Karin Velez [00:32:54]:
So your flavorful garlic and onions can last four to six months. Or more, which means that you're getting that kind of continued bang for your buck for all that effort that you put into during the garden season. Now, there are a few other ways that you can store your onions and your garlic, particularly if you have some that are damaged or you just don't have the ideal storage conditions or maybe you grew too many to fit your storage conditions. Right. I've seen this happen. The first would be for, for garlic, and that's to go ahead and just dice that garlic up and store it in oil in jars in the refrigerator. This is one of my favorite ways to store garlic that makes it super easy to use when I don't have the time or the inclination to peel and chop my garlic. So I spend one session peeling and then chopping them in my food processor.

Karin Velez [00:33:52]:
And then I pack it into a large mason jar, cover it with olive oil, throw the lid on and put it in the fridge. That's it. Now, the olive oil does solidify in the fridge, but it's super easy just to scoop out what I need and let it come to room temperature real quick before I use it. You can also dice garlic and store it in the freezer by filling your ice cube trays with a specific amount, say a tablespoon, and then covering it with water or oil and then freezing it. And then you can just pop them out of the ice cube trays and throw them in freezer bags and store them in the freezer. And now you have a pre measured amount for your recipes. You can do the same thing with onions, something similar by just dicing them and storing them in the freezer. Now just know that these are not going to be candidates for, you know, fresh use of any kind.

Karin Velez [00:34:43]:
These are only going to be good for cooked application because it does change the texture of the onions. But it's a good way to, to sort of save some onions that maybe are sprouting or you have too many or they're damaged or whatever. The other solution for both garlic and onions is to dice it up and then dehydrate them and either grind that into a powder so that you have onion and garlic powder, which I do this a lot, or you can just leave them diced and add them to recipes as is to rehydrate while they cook, cook. This also means they can be used for like homemade onion dip mix. There are lots of ways to store your garlic and your onions even if you don't have a space to hold them fresh. So hopefully this episode gave you the tools that you need to successfully harvest and cure and store your garlic and your onions this year, and the confidence to grow even more for next year. If you like this episode, don't forget to give the podcast a follow so you never miss an episode and share the episode with someone that you think might find it helpful. Until next time, my gardening friends.

Karin Velez [00:35:51]:
Keep on cultivating that dream garden and we'll talk again soon.