Posted this is in another garlic thread, but wanted to get it documented here.
Things are moving along and drying down/yellowing.
Here's what my garlic looks like as of this morning.
The last pick shows a scape I left on one plant. Notice how green the leaves still are compared to the one where the scapes were taken off.
In Ron England's book, he takes scapes after the coil has fully formed and then starts to straighten out. I might go more towards taking them off when they start to coil. I took mine off right as they were emerging.
Based on what that one plant looks like (being still 90% green), it looks like taking scapes off early speeds up the drying down process.
In other words, waiting longer to take off scapes seems to keep the plant fully green longer. Perhaps this is a good thing for the resulting bulbs as far as size and storage quality/length. This assumes that you still will cut it off a week or so before harvest to not have the bulb size lessened by leaving the scape on through harvest.
6-14-18 a.JPG
6-14-18 b.JPG
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6-14-18 d.JPG