You should remove the scapes once they come out to ensure all the energy goes into the bulb. Once they are entirely yellow, and start flopping over, then they are ready to be dug up.

I grow soft necks too in upstate NY, and mine are nowhere new ready to pick, maybe for another 6-8 weeks.

As geosankie said, probably no scapes on the softneck (a few varieties are semi-scaping, but not many).

I'm in a similar zone but a bit farther north from you, still I think our garlic should finish up around the same time.

Some softneck varieties are quite a bit earlier than others, with my earliest (Shandung) maturing in the middle to later part of June, and my latest (Lorz Italian) no later than the second week of July. You can try digging down to check bulb size in early June and keep checking every few days to make sure they don't start to separate.

A little yellowing on the leaves is normal, but a lot of yellow might indicate a lack of nitrogen and you might want to do a little top dressing. Likely your garlic hasn't started bulbing yet so a little compost or all mild fertilizer should help out as long as you don't overdo it.

Post a picture if you want some more feedback on the yellowing.

-Mark

Last years softneck at harvest time.

This post was edited by madroneb on Mon, May 5, 14 at 10:55

I get scapes on softneck. I grow Early Italian Purple, German Red and one labeled Sicilian Red and they all scape for me. Perhaps it is the very long growing season here in Northern California, perhaps it is how much I feed and water, but I have consistently gotten scapes for the past 15-16 year I have been growing garlic.

German Red is listed as a hardneck variety.
"German Red garlic (Allium sativum) is one of the many hardneck garlic varieties available to the home gardener. This means that the plant will produce flower stalks and the resulting garlic bulbs can't be successfully stored for as long as the softneck varieties."
Italian Purple is also listed as a hardneck rocambole.
I haven't found any info on SCILLIAN Red.

To determine the proper time to harvest a particular variety of garlic, you must first know the sub-group of garlic (Artichoke, Asiatic, Creole, Porcelain, Purple Stripe, Rocambole, Silverskin, and Turban) to which the variety belongs. Some of those are "hard neck", some are "soft neck", and some can show traits of both.

Most of the common garlic varieties can be found in the link below, with the sub-group listed. Once you have identified the sub-group, the proper harvest stage can be found by looking up "When should I harvest garlic?" in the FAQ.

I wish Gardenweb allowed "stickies", this link should be kept at the top... especially since there is no FAQ in this forum.

Here is a link that might be useful: Heirloom Vegetable Archive - Garlic

No such thing as sicilian red, but perhaps sicilian or sicilian gold.

If you can braid it it must be softneck NOT true, then?

These three are nothing like the porcelains or the Korean Red I grow which have stems like bamboo.

The varieties I planted are Inchelium Red (artichoke) and Lorz Italian (artichoke). I will post some photos this weekend. Thanks for everyone's input.

Once the foliage starts to yellow from the bottom up, you can carefully dig down on a representative plant and check the state of the developing bulb. The longer you leave them the larger the bulb will grow, but the more danger you have of waiting too long and having the wrappers disintegrate into individual cloves that do not keep as well. You can dig early and, with care, cure younger, smaller bulbs very successfully and so to a certain extent harvest for size. In fact you may even get larger (but fewer) cloves that way. If you wait for the entire top to yellow and fall over, you will probably have waited too long. Like in the picture the top leaves should still be showing decent green.

Yellowing leaves and stalks flopping over is the sign to begin harvesting. Of course, check a sample to make sure the garlic is actually ready (has a complete "paper" coating around the bulbs). Then you will want to allow the garlics to dry out in a cool dry place for a few days or weeks, then store permanently, and eat away!