* The author is part of the community of La Vanguardia readers
I share in La Vanguardia Readers’ Photos this sequence of photographs captured in a garlic cultivation field in Las Pedroñeras, in Cuenca, during the harvest.
It is removed from the ground with the machine and then the art of the work of thousands of people by hand begins between drying, sizing and peeling.
Spain is the largest producer and exporter of garlic in Europe. Families and entire towns traditionally live off this product, mainly in Cuenca, Ciudad Real, Andalusia and Albacete.
We start with the harvest of white and violet garlic and end in the month of July with the traditional Castilian and Spanish purple, so appreciated!
Garlic is a perennial plant with flat, thin leaves, up to 3 cm in length. The roots easily reach depths of 5 cm or more. The bulb, with white skin, forms a head divided into segments that are commonly called cloves.
Each head can contain 6 to 12 teeth, each of which is wrapped in a thin layer of white or reddish color. And each of the cloves can give rise to a new garlic plant.