When to Harvest Garlic?
 

What are the cues that it is time to harvest my hard neck garlic? Pictures would be nice.

Have the scapes completed a full curl? If so have you cut them off? Have the lower half of the plants' leaves started to turn brown? If you wait too long the bulbs will burst the wrappers and lose storage duration. If you grew 10 plants no biggie, if you grew a hundred or more then it is a biggie unless you are selling them in the next few weeks or so.

Tom_NJ will weigh in I suspect.

Probably best guide is when you are down to 4 green leaves left. This gives a reasonable number of wrappers around the globe allowing for good storage when cured.

Each garlic leaf extends down underground and forms a wrapper layer around the bulb, so as each leaf dies back you lose a wrapper layer. If you lose them all the cloves will be exposed and not store long. For the garlic to store well the bulb should have several wrapper layers, so harvest when you have 4-5 mostly green leaves at the top of the plant.

While you can begin eating the garlic immediately, it will store longer, taste better, and peel easier if you cure the garlic by drying it protected from sun and rain until the foliage is completely dry, usually 4-6 weeks depending on the temperature and air flow. Then store in a cool place with moderate humidity such as a cellar.

I used to go with four green leaves remaining, but often had some that would have started separating. Last few years I've pulled them when they had five green leaves remaining and the sixth is just starting to turn yellow. Out of 108 heads I typically grow, only one or two will have Started to split open at this point, and the heads are mostly 2-21/2" across.

If you are a commercial grower or have a lot of garlic that you need to store long, those wrappers are important, otherwise I feel this problem is overblown. If you want to maximize your production, and the conditions are ok (meaning fairly dry), you will get more production by waiting until 2-4 leaves are green. You usually will still get some wrappers this way, depends on luck and variety also.

Thermidrome last year, harvested 1st July, in April was still very solid, and it had zero wrappers from the beginning (the plants were affected by a virus which was there in the seed garlic when bought, and that affected the leaf health and therefore the wrappers).

i harvest or try to when i have three green leaves remaining. that ensures the garlic
has reached its maximum growth, and will store for several months.







keith

A lot depends on the variety. I used to harvest at three mostly green leaves, but one variety I grew (Estonian Red) would have a lot of split wrappers. I switched to four mostly green leaves and the splits reduced but were still too many. At five mostly green leaves all of my varieties have solid wrappers. Bulb size has not suffered at all and most of my crop comes in a 2.5 - 3.0 inches.

If you intend to eat or replant your garlic within 4-5 months, three wrapper layers is fine. If you intend to store it for 6-8+ months as I do, then more wrapper layers are better. My experience is that bulb size is not affected - in fact the last two years harvested at five green leaves yielded the largest bulbs yet. Of course other factors affect bulb size such as soil fertility, water, scape removal, temperatures, and especially sunshine. If the difference between 3 and 5 green leaves is a factor at all it seems to be a rather small one.

We get really different results from the leaf number depending on how much rain we get in those last weeks. Sometimes you have six leaves looking green, but the tips are brown and when you dig you find most of the wrappers are gone. One way around that I've been told to estimate 1/3 of leaves remaining based on the total leaf area and parts that are drying down. But we still can get more green than that even though they're ready. I don't like to see any of them get down to less than 4 leaves, although the Purple Stripes often seem dry before they are due to harvest.


The other rule of thumb I use, is that they should be ready to harvest around 3 weeks after harvesting the scapes. This year the three week rule was spot on. They all had well formed cloves and I had just a couple - one each in different varieties - that had gone to a split wrapper.


Some people will leave a few scapes on, and they say that when they stand up straight, they're ready to harvest. I left one on my porcelain this year but it wasn't straight up when I harvested, and it still isn't - don't think it ever will be. Sitting out there in the field, maturing crooked. So much for signs.

Lots of rain was predicted when mine would have been ready to harvest so I harvested a bit early and they looked great. I didn't count the green leaves remaining but it may have been 6 or so.

I cut my scapes off weeks earlier.

I've done the same myself -- harvested a bit earlier than I wanted because of forecasted heavy rains. You sacrifice a little bit in size, but you avoid chances of rot and ensure you have healthy seed stock for the next year.