I have done a lot of rethinking about harvesting garlic. Experimenting with the scape seeds, bulbils, a few things have been learned by serendipity.
When collecting seeds the plant is left in the ground about 6 weeks longer than the conventional harvest in early July. This causes the bulb in the ground to get much larger and basically split the envelope and the cloves are bursting the sides of the clump. This year 2015 such bulbs was dried and simply placed in my root cellar. I found the bulbs thus treated lasted in prime condition as well as the completely encased cloves of the July harvest. This year all my garlic will be allowed to mature until splitting occurs, thus giving larger cloves, hence more garlic. This means harvest will be about the end of August in my Zone 5.
Another observation. I don't enjoy the scapes and use to cut them off at some stage of growth. In 2015 I left many on and found that growth is better than when cutting them off.
Conclusion; My hard neck garlic will be allowed to mature, harvest at the end of August, and harvest bulbils, since no scapes will be cut off.
For seed stock I will probably have enough rounds maturing this year to use for normal planting in October 2016.
http://durgan.org/2016/May%202016/15...20Garlic/HTML/ 15 May 2016 Garlic
Garlic, cloves, rounds and bulbils are all thriving. I expect a good harvest.
