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bower · June 21, 2016

The common advice I read is to let 2/3 of the leaves go yellow, and in my climate it does take several weeks for them to dry down once it's started.
If you harvest early they say there will be more wrappers and longer storage life. But when growing up garlic from bulbils the smaller plants also had fewer leaves - I was a bit worried to see just one wrapper over the individual cloves on some of them - but they kept perfectly all winter even so.

I wonder if the amount of wrappers is more important from a commercial standpoint where the garlic is being shipped and stored in variable conditions before it gets to the consumer.

I picked up a garlic at the store last week when I ran out, and really noticed how much more wrappers they had than my own. Sadly some of the cloves had gone soft anyway!

June 21, 2016	#5
bower Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Newfoundland, Canada Posts: 6,793	The common advice I read is to let 2/3 of the leaves go yellow, and in my climate it does take several weeks for them to dry down once it's started. If you harvest early they say there will be more wrappers and longer storage life. But when growing up garlic from bulbils the smaller plants also had fewer leaves - I was a bit worried to see just one wrapper over the individual cloves on some of them - but they kept perfectly all winter even so. I wonder if the amount of wrappers is more important from a commercial standpoint where the garlic is being shipped and stored in variable conditions before it gets to the consumer. I picked up a garlic at the store last week when I ran out, and really noticed how much more wrappers they had than my own. Sadly some of the cloves had gone soft anyway!