Some are red, others brown, garlic skins come in many colors.
I usually add some new strains, but only take the biggest so I’m not even sure what they are anymore? I do grow this huge strain of soft neck, Most soft necks come out small here, but a few really make hard neck size bulbs. Here is one I’m saving for seed. I save 7 hard and 7 softneck bulbs for seed. I don’t use them all. I may try other purchased seed(cloves) too.
So only two of 35 Music bulbs had any splitting of the skin. One of those two, it was so minor that I’m almost not even worried about it. Basically a half inch long slit in the skin. The other one has enough of a break to see the top and side of one clove.
So when I harvest and cure onions (and now garlic), the outer skin/wrapper is often dirty and fragmented, with a “clean” layer underneath. Is it ok to remove that, or should I leave it at least until the bulb is pulled out of storage?
Usually with onions, I leave it, then when I pull some out to use, if there is a partial, dirty outer layer, I remove it for “curb appeal” in the kitchen, so it exposes a nice, clean layer.
The “skin” on alliums holds dormancy inducing chemicals. If you want to store onions and garlic, it should always be with the dry skins intact.
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We never plant in October — too busy with farmers market. This is the first year in several that we finished planting by the end of December. I say “we,” but it is mostly my wife doing the planting.
Even if later planted garlic plants might have been behind in root development than those planted earlier, we still great crop with very large cloves with no substantial difference between earlier and later plants of the same variety (and we plant more than 70 varieties). The only time we notice a big difference is when the last of the garlics are not planted until March. The garlics of February and March are noticeably smaller.
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