I plan to pick tonight, so if anyone out there thinks these are not ready and could wait a while, chime in. Pretty sure I will pick anyway, but I'd like the thoughts since this I am new to this.
This is my first time with a bed of garlic that has been walking here since at least the early 70s. It seems well adapted to this clime. The original owner's (built in 50s) here were greek and had a bunch of mediterranean crops. For years I had been transplanting it out of the tomato garden and into a few spots, then harvesting some haphazardly, usually too late.
Last year I dug up a patch in July, dried it semi properly, built a box and put the best back in there in early Nov. It broke the leaf mulch in Feb, got snowed on through April, and has looked wonderful. I broke scapes a few weeks back, but still catch myself calling them scrapes.
It has been dry, lately been hot, and I think it is time for them to come out. From internet pics, I believe them to be purple stripe, but could be mistaken. I pulled one last Fri that looked ready, but I figured I'd wait until before rain to maximize potential. Well, now they are down to 3-4 fully green leaves, and eventually this weather will break.
I just picked one with 4 green leaves and the 5th with brown tip. I pushed the 2" or so mulch back to uncover the bulb. The bulb is a very nice 1-3/4" diameter, which is about the biggest they would possibly get while walking freely. This bulb is from the end of row of cloves, which received the smallest of the replanted cloves. After that was rows of rounds and bulbils, which was a cool idea, but I won't do again it was more complicated to weed and many didn't even come up.
What say you? To pick or not to pick, that is the question. <groan>
