Just beautiful. What varieties?
Knowing what I do now I should have planted more as I like the convenience of my own canned chopped garlic and powdered garlic. We’ll get 'em next year…well actually this fall, I guess. 
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The first batch are a mixture of various garlic. There are several varieties and I do not want to keep track of them. They are Purple Glazer, Kinary Red, Romanian Red, Brown Tempest and Spanish Roja.
The second large batch are German Red, Rocambole type. I grow them the original stock from bulbils.
The ones on the table are mostly Music and some German White. They are Porcelain type.
It is just fun and relatively easy to grow garlic. None of the wild animals bother them. I just need to pay attention to drainage and good culture practice.
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I’m in the Northeast and notice that my garlic will need to be harvested several weeks before normal. Anyone else experiencing that. I assume it was the warm weather in late winter or perhaps I should have fertilized more.
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Mine is early too. Last year I harvested in mid July. Now it looks like I might be harvesting this weekend.
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I pulled a few yesterday because the leaves were browning. Mine look to be early this year.
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This is my first year and I pulled half mine yesterday, will not pull the rest till July 6.
They have done great with a warm winter and lots of timely rain. Fun to grow!
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Harvest time seems normal to me. I did not want to wait too late.
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Same here… I have two kinds, one is already half yellow leaves… Way to early.
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Mine too, like 3 weeks earlier than last year. I’m pulling mine though, they are ready.
I did plant earlier last year. not sure if that matters or not?
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Normally it shouldn’t… But winter was very mild, spring early. It came out of dormancy too early, I guess.
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My garlic was the first plants growing. They don’t seem to mind the cold. Although bulbs are not huge this year, sometimes I get giant bulbs, just average size with no monsters so far. I have only harvested 1/3 of the bulbs, I will finish the rest later today.
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I took one kind out, the one with yellow leaves. I do not think it is really ready, but I also do not think it would get any better.The leaves get yellow because bulb cover starts to rot from constant moister. Now the funny game"dry me between the showers " begins…
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Harvested my Music garlic this morning. Looks pretty good except for one that looks like I planted a double clove. Oh well.
I put in a lot less than last year, because I still have about four pounds left from last year’s crop. Music stores well, btw.
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@KYWeaver Sounds good. I am curious, how do you store your garlic, and when do you take the scapes off (if you do).
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I take the scapes off when they start to curl, and just pull. I missed a few and those bulbs are definitely smaller.
I cured the garlic in single layer on the back porch (warm, shaded, and well ventilated) for about a month before cutting off the stalks. I don’t know how long is recommended, but the twins were born in the meantime, and that’s as soon as I could get to it. Since then (last August) they’ve been in baskets in the dining room. What is left is sprouting some and there are a few shriveled cloves, but it still tastes good!
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Interesting. I have been experimenting with leaving the scapes on longer. That is supposed to make the garlic store longer. It’s been had to say with just a few data points, but I think it does help increase the storage life.
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Dunno. Music is pretty bulletproof, so it might not be a good test case, regardless of sample size. I’ll try to mark the bulbs with scapes to see but no promises.
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It will be interesting to hear your results. I am not “scientific” enough to say with any certainty, but it appears that taking the scapes off early vs letting them stay until a week or two before harvest doesn’t effect size all that much. Size seems to vary for me more on a year by year basis regardless of when I take the scapes off (if I even do, as I sometimes leave a few for seed).
In “Growing Great Garlic” Ron Engeland says that he experimented with leaving the scapes on much longer. He got a lot of push back from other garlic growers, but his garlic kept way longer. Since his test was on a field sample size, I’d tend to turst what he found over my one row sample. But I think the jury is still out on this…
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It’s hard to understand how leaving scapes on longer would increase storage time but it’s worth a try. The disadvantage is that some of the scape gets woody when left on longer so less of it is edible. Also cutting the scape rather than pulling it off gets more of the edible portion.
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Yes, if you leave the scapes on longer, you give up eating them.
Engeland theorized that if you take the scape off early, the garlic “thinks” that its chance at reproducing is gone so it diverts energy to actively growing to try and repro again and does not harden off as well. Leaving the scape on longer let the garlic “think” that its making seed and can go dormant having reproduced. At least this is how I would summarize it. He talks about it quite a bit in his book.
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