Is this ideal, or should I let the rest go longer? I harvested about ten of my ~ 30 plants.
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What do the tops look like? Very yellow/brown or still quite a bit of green left in them? Unless there is rain in the forecast that could cause the bulbs to crack, i would leave them for another week or two. Ill dig mine about july 25th.
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I think you’re there. “When the bottom three leaves have died” is an instruction I read last year, and it makes sense. Works for me.
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I have read “1/3” which is probably about the same number. The bottom two leaves are pretty much entirely gone, or totally brown. The third and fourth are pretty yellow.
I don’t want to have all the cloves separate on me. There’s at least some chance of thunderstorms pretty much every day this week, but it’s always hard to tell when they will materialize. We could get nothing of significance, or a 2.5” deluge.
I started pulling my hardnecks this weekend. They probably could have stayed in a bit longer but I had the time and they were close so out they came. Last year I tried to push them an extra week or two and most of the heads started to split open resulting in a whole lot of garlic powder!
First bed I pulled.
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Those are beauts. What kind are they?
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Romanian Reds, always a nice cropper here
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You tell by looking at the leaves not the bulb although if you are satisfied with the size of the bulbs then you are ok.
The size is acceptable, but not as big as I’d like.
The issue is that on the softneck I grew, the skins completely split open before I harvested them, so I’m a little gun shy on these.
I think they’re pretty well done sizing up once they start to die back.
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I guess it depends on the variety. Almost 25% of my size comes after the tops start to die back.
This is after growing my variety for over 30 years, and it has been in my family for over 120 years.
Some varieties may not continue to grow after top die back, but mine does. I usually leave mine go until tops are about 80% yellowed.
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Wow! Good to know - I may have been shorting myself by harvesting too soon. Thanks for the input - I’ll leave some in the ground this year and see.
I’ve had problems with heads shattering if left to long, and I like to avoid that. So thanks, and I’ll see how it goes.
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i grew those last year. great garlic! mine had a reddish tinge to the wrappers. maybe my soil.
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Yes the heads will split if left to long in wet conditions. Usually when its dry, like this year, they wont have splitting issues
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My softnecks split so badly the only option left is to freeze the cloves.
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If its july and i have some hardneck garlics already finishing up and losing most of their leaves that i took the scape off already earlier, If i just left these in the ground would they wait to sprout until next spring or would they sprout up before fall and never bulb because of no cold? My goal was to keep these as a flowering garlic bed but some stopped earlier than I expected probably from drying out too much. The bulbs are 6" down so will be fine over winter here.
Each leaf is a layer around the bulb. After three are dead, anymore shorten the life of the bulb. Makes the decision to pull easy for me. I harvested mine July 4th.
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When did you planted yours ? Thanks and congrats!
About 11/1 last fall.
be a few more weeks for my georgian fire. lower leaf just starting to brown.