Pretty! Hang 'em high!
hortster

Finished harvesting my Ontario Purple Trillium rocambole garlic today(05.18.2013). An early harvesting rocambole variety indeed!

You sure do clean up your garlic a lot right out of the gate. My garlic never sees water once it has left the ground, and the bulbs don't look this clean until the last trim before going into storage.

My softnecks are still showing new growth, and I haven't seen the first scape on the rocas yet. Things are running a little late this year, apple blossoms two weeks behind last year. Whatever went down, the garlic noticed.

I wash and trim the roots as soon as I have stripped off all the unnecessary leaves.

Those ibarok harvested look not quite ready to me, well the second one has cloves bulging out which is an indication they are ready.

Also, look like they got water later than they wanted and were beginning to split and start growing again. I always seem to forget and water one bed too much and get a messy crop.

Learning not to care, it is all usable even if not quite perfect.

Aha! So that explains why the wrappers are splitting. We have a good rain for two days before I harvested those Ont. purple trilliums.
The turbans (first pic) have about 6 green leaves left so I decided to harvest them as I was aiming for longer shelf life rather than size. And I noticed too that some stems are falling over.

The past three years we have had a very late end to our rainy season (end of June/early July) so I have had a big percentage of the heads split. I usually try to use those first or use them to plant out if they are big enough. It is very difficult to harvest when the planting mix is saturated--hard to get enough wrappers to protect the heads.

Took the first bed of Early Italian Purple yesterday. Only 5 of the three dozen were big enough to warrant being replanted, imho. Dearth of fertilizer early enough as we had a mild winter and I should have got to them sooner.

Oh well, there is always next year.