Garlic issues

[BG1977]

Plants don’t quite look mature to me…but the bulbs are missing skin.

[BG1977]

I pulled two bulbs that both look like this. Would you go ahead and just harvest the rest at this point?

[jcguarneri]

Let em grow. Sometimes weird things happen like that, and it’s rarely more than a few bulbs that do that.

[galinas]

That could be caused by generous watering after drought, like cracking in root veggies

[jcguarneri]

That’s a much better explanation than “stuff happens”

[BG1977]

It hasn’t rained a whole lot, but I did have them on the drip irrigation. I stopped a couple weeks ago, but it may not have been soon enough. It seems like excessive water can cause this phenomenon.

[Kellogg_Hill_Farms]

Thats from excessive moisture. Ive seen whole crops of thousands of sets get lost to excessive moisture.
In my experience, garlic with a good mulch layer of grass clippings does not need additional irrigation.

[BG1977]

Well, I may have to freeze them for them to keep. Perhaps it’s just this variety, too. These are softnecks (Western Rose).

Music is still very green, and I haven’t looked at any of those yet. Maybe those will fare better.

[Drew51]

Music is still very green

That’s good news. I have been growing garlic about 5 or 6 years and I’m still trying to figure this plant out. I guess I’m getting there. My very first crop was tremendous and I have yet to do it again. This year though they look awesome. Well often top growth is fine but bulb size is small. Although this year the stalks look thick as hell! Those bulbs are decent size right now and I’m a month away. Scapes are just forming now, little things.
The front rows are softneck the back hard. Various types, I use the biggest bulbs for seed whatever they happen to be… Many cultivars. The only one I can tell is Kilarney red for it’s fan like foliage.

[Kellogg_Hill_Farms]

I use the biggest bulbs for seed whatever they happen to be

My great grand father brought over our variety, some now unknown Italian hard neck, from Italy in 1910. He always said, “Plant big, get big, plant small, get small”. We use only the largest cloves for planting and eat small cloves. They come from the largest heads.

[Drew51]

I plant soft and hard, and the soft, is still good from last year. I have about 5 bulbs left.
When the hard necks start aging I clean and freeze cleaned cloves. I have some from last year. I use them once the softs run out. When the new crop is harvested I dehydrate and powder anything I have left. The best garlic powder ever, pungent! It’s pungent right now from garlic from 2018. That store stuff must be extremely old. As the 2018 powder is fantastic!