How to Store Garlic After Harvest (Curing, Conditions, and How Long Each Variety Keeps)
, by Earthwise Garlic, 5 min reading time
How long garlic lasts after harvest comes down to curing it properly and storing it in the right conditions. Here's what works, what doesn't, and how long each variety keeps.
How long your garlic lasts after harvest comes down to two things: whether it was cured properly, and where you store it. Get both right and hardneck garlic keeps 4 to 8 months. Get them wrong and you're peeling soft, sprouting cloves by October.
We cure and store garlic every summer on our farm in Coburg, Oregon. Here's what works.
Cure It Before You Store It
Fresh garlic off the ground isn't ready to store. It's still full of moisture, and that moisture needs to leave before the garlic will keep. The curing process dries the neck, tightens the outer wrapper skins, and stabilizes the flavor. Skip it or rush it and the garlic rots rather than stores.
Hang bulbs in bunches of 8 to 10, or lay them out in a single layer on wire racks or screens. The space you use needs good airflow and shade. Direct sun dries the outside too fast while leaving moisture trapped inside. A covered porch, a barn with the doors open, a garage with good ventilation, any of these work well.
Give it 3 to 4 weeks. The garlic is fully cured when the necks feel completely dry and papery, the roots are dry, and the outer skins are tight and firm. At that point, trim the roots close to the base and cut the stem down to about an inch. Now it's ready for long-term storage.
One thing not to do: don't wash freshly harvested garlic before curing. Brush off loose soil with your hands if needed, but don't add moisture. Wet garlic going into the curing process molds before it dries.
Where to Store Garlic
The ideal conditions are cool, dry, and well-ventilated. A temperature of 55 to 65 degrees F is ideal for most varieties. A mesh bag hanging in a kitchen pantry, a wire basket on a counter away from the stove, an open crate in a cool corner of the basement, all of these work.
What doesn't work is the refrigerator. Cold combined with humidity triggers sprouting faster than almost anything else. Whole heads of garlic should never go in the fridge. Once you've broken the head into individual cloves, you have a few more days before they need to be used, but storing whole heads cold is how you end up with garlic that sprouts in two weeks.
Also avoid spots near the stove, in direct sun, or anywhere that gets warm and humid in summer. Heat speeds up the aging process and humidity leads to mold.
How Long Different Varieties Last
Storage life varies significantly between garlic types, and it's one of the most practical reasons to grow more than one variety.
Softneck varieties store the longest. Inchelium Red and Lorz Italian, both artichoke softnecks, keep 6 to 12 months in good conditions. If you cure them properly and store them somewhere cool and dry, you can be pulling from last summer's harvest well into the following spring.
Most hardneck varieties store 4 to 6 months. Music and Ukrainian Red both fall in this range. They're at their best in the first few months after harvest when the flavor is strongest, but they'll hold well into winter with proper storage.
Donostia Red is the exception among hardnecks. It's a Creole type that stores 9 to 10 months, much closer to softneck storage life than most hardnecks. If you want flavor variety and long storage from a hardneck, Donostia Red is worth growing.
Georgian Fire stores 6 to 8 months, a bit longer than Music or Ukrainian Red, probably because of its thick Porcelain skins.
Garlic Braids for Softneck Varieties
Softneck garlic has flexible stems that stay pliable after curing, which makes them ideal for braiding. A braided rope of garlic hung in the kitchen keeps each bulb accessible and well-ventilated, and it looks good. Inchelium Red and Lorz Italian are both good braiding varieties.
To braid garlic, cure the bulbs without cutting the stems first. Once cured, braid while the stems are still slightly flexible. If they've dried too stiff, a light misting of water can bring enough flexibility back to work with. Hang the finished braid in a cool, dry spot with airflow.
A garlic braid also makes a practical gift. If you're growing more than you'll use, braiding and giving them away is a good way to share the harvest and introduce people to the variety differences that commercial garlic never shows.
Signs Garlic Is Going Bad
Soft or spongy cloves mean the garlic is drying out from the inside and needs to be used soon. It's still edible but won't store much longer.
Green sprouts inside a clove mean the garlic is getting old and has started redirecting energy into new growth. The clove itself is still usable but the sprout can taste slightly bitter. Many cooks remove it before using garlic raw.
Mold on the outer wrapper usually means the storage spot is too humid. Peel back the affected layers and check whether the cloves underneath are firm and clean. If they are, the garlic is still fine. If the mold has penetrated to the cloves, discard it.
Mushy or wet cloves indicate rot. This sometimes happens to individual cloves in an otherwise healthy head. Remove and discard the affected cloves and use the rest promptly.
Storing Seed Garlic for Replanting
If you're saving some of your harvest to replant in fall, keep the largest, firmest bulbs from your best-performing plants. Store them the same way you'd store eating garlic, cool, dry, and well-ventilated, and don't break them into cloves until you're ready to plant.
The cloves you plant become next year's harvest. Planting the biggest cloves from your best bulbs is how garlic quality improves over time on a home scale.
If you're ordering seed garlic from us rather than saving your own, it ships in September from our farm in Coburg, Oregon, fully cured and ready to go in the ground. Browse our six varieties here.