Thanks Sari! That is good info about the wrappers.
I was thinking the same about leaving them a bit longer if I can.
We have two days of "heat warning" coming up, and then the forecast is showing about 8 mm rain on Thursday, and 8-10 again on Sunday, with high temperatures remaining in the range 19-24 C, so still very much summer weather, and perhaps warm enough for the soil to dry again quickly and/or be transpired by the plants? I would be more concerned about the rain if the temperatures were peaking around 15 C and no dry days in between.
Yesterday I searched through all my garlic patches and found two smaller plants with just three green leaves left, so I pulled them to take a look. One was a Persian Star, and could definitely have done with more growing time IMO. The other was a three-yr-old Music with just two cloves, and I think quite close to the clove size I expected, although most of the garlic in that patch are still quite green with 6 leaves on most, so no need to hurry those. Both bulbs have nice wrappers afaict, but the outer one already breaking down.
Two things I noticed: (1) the soil at bulb level is still quite moist enough for growing. I was a bit surprised because the surface is so dry and my vegetable beds have needed a lot of watering. My main garlic beds haven't been watered all season so I was a little bit worried that they were too dry. (2) the other thing I was happy to see no sign of mites or wireworms damage. iirc the mites like humid weather and perhaps wetter soil; it doesn't seem that the conditions suited them so far. Now that I think of it, the year I had mite damage was very wet.
I may dig a few of the big porcelains on Wednesday just to see how they are, and leave the others for a dry day next week, aiming to get to four leaves vs 5. Then I can compare, whether the ones left longer also started to suffer from pests, and how much more they grew being left to 4 leaves.