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PureHarvest · June 19, 2019

Biscuit, pull representative plant and look at the bulb.
Are you happy with the size?
Would you be disappointed if more than half your haul was only that size?
If you like what you see, harvest. Better to have more leaves intact and thus more wrappers on the bulb.
Pro-tip. When your plants are all pulled, take the bottom most leaf that isn’t all the way broken down and grab it close to the plant stalk. Pull down towards the bulb. The skin of that leaf will most likely split in two as you peel in down around the bulb. Sort of like when you peel a banana. The bulb will be completely clean because the leaf/wrapper you just pulled off took the dirt with it.
You can then hang the plants to dry and cure and all you’ll have left to do is trim roots and cut the top off. No dry layers to peel at and dirt to clean.
We did this on half our harvest and those bulbs were 100% clean going into the drying trailer. I’ll I have to do now is trim roots and tops. No hours upon hours of peeling dry wrappers off to get to a clean layer.
Look at the bottom 2 pics in post 27. If those weren’t field stripped like I described, they would be grey/brown because they would be coated with dry soil.
Hopefully next year we can harvest over two days so the crew has enough time to do this to all of the harvest.

June 19, 2019	#50
PureHarvest Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Mar 2014 Location: Mid-Atlantic right on the line of Zone 7a and 7b Posts: 1,369	Biscuit, pull representative plant and look at the bulb. Are you happy with the size? Would you be disappointed if more than half your haul was only that size? If you like what you see, harvest. Better to have more leaves intact and thus more wrappers on the bulb. Pro-tip. When your plants are all pulled, take the bottom most leaf that isn’t all the way broken down and grab it close to the plant stalk. Pull down towards the bulb. The skin of that leaf will most likely split in two as you peel in down around the bulb. Sort of like when you peel a banana. The bulb will be completely clean because the leaf/wrapper you just pulled off took the dirt with it. You can then hang the plants to dry and cure and all you’ll have left to do is trim roots and cut the top off. No dry layers to peel at and dirt to clean. We did this on half our harvest and those bulbs were 100% clean going into the drying trailer. I’ll I have to do now is trim roots and tops. No hours upon hours of peeling dry wrappers off to get to a clean layer. Look at the bottom 2 pics in post 27. If those weren’t field stripped like I described, they would be grey/brown because they would be coated with dry soil. Hopefully next year we can harvest over two days so the crew has enough time to do this to all of the harvest. Last edited by PureHarvest; June 19, 2019 at 08:35 PM.