Vitamins all year round. How to store garlic in the winter at home?

Garlic - all respected medicinal vegetable and one of the favorite seasonings for various dishes. His agrotechnics is very simple, and even a beginner is able to get a good harvest.

But to grow fragrant bulbs is only half the battle. How to store garlic in winter at home, so that the harvest is enough until next year?

Winter or spring?

In order to provide vegetables with good shelf life, it is very important to remove them in due time. You can not dig unripe bulbs, but it's also not worth it to delay it.

Garlic is of two kinds: winter and spring. Winter, as the name suggests, is planted under winter. He rushes early, in the middle of summer. Arrows usually break out, but to determine maturity, you can leave on the plants a few pieces. As soon as the shell bursts and bulbs appear, it's time to dig.

In spring garlic, there are no shooters . When to dig it and how to store garlic in winter at home? By harvesting proceed when the feather fell. If there is doubt in maturity, you can dig one head and look at the state of the scales. If they are dry and dense, the garlic is ripe.

Digging is necessary in dry weather, gently scraping the ground and avoiding damage to the bulbs. Next, the garlic must be dried well, without cutting the leaves. It is laid out in the sun or in a ventilated room and dried for 1-2 weeks. Then the roots and stems are cut, the bulbs are sorted.

Where to store garlic?

Optimum storage temperature - low positive temperatures (+ 1-5 ⁰ С) and relative humidity of 70%. Such conditions can be created in ventilated cellars or in attics. In a city apartment it is allowed to store in a dark dry place at a temperature of up to +20 ⁰ С.

To preserve garlic until the spring, it can be placed in a dense plastic bag, wrapped in several layers of paper and prikopat on the site. On top of the place must be covered with plant remains. Garlic should be well preserved, but it will be possible to get it only when the snow melts.

How to store garlic in the winter?

At home, two methods are widely used:

• Weaving braids. Well-dried large heads with long remains of stems are woven into the basis of twine or thick filament. After every few bulbs they are additionally tied with twine for strength. A faster but less decorative way is simply to fill the heads with a kapron stocking or a canvas bag.
• Storage in wooden boxes. Healthy, cleared from the ground and the roots of the head, they are laid out in one layer and sprinkled with wood ash. Then the layers are repeated. Ash will absorb excess moisture and will not allow the development of rot and infection. In the apartment, the box can successfully replace the glass jar, and ash - salt.

How to store garlic in the winter at home, if the integrity of the covering scales is broken, or is there simply no suitable place for it?

• You can clean the teeth, put them in a jar and fill with vegetable oil. It must be closed with a lid with openings and put in the refrigerator. Thus, the hostess at hand will not only ready to use garlic, but also fragrant oil for refills.
• Provide yourself with vitamins for the winter and save space by drying the garlic. With this method, 5 kg of fresh heads produce only 1 kg of dried ones. The teeth are cleaned, crushed and dried. This can be done both in a special dryer and in a conventional oven. Then garlic is poured into sealed containers and can be stored for about a year.

Whom we will eat first?

How to store garlic in winter so that it does not dry up and deteriorate before the new harvest? The maximum period of its use is short, only 8 months. And in the warm air of apartments it is almost halved. If you have collected both autumn and summer garlic, then the first one should use winter crops. It is put into billets and used for food first. Spring garlic is more suitable for long-term storage, and in a dry cool room it may well survive until next summer.