When to harvest.

15 years ago

I live in central CA, I pulled a head of regular garlic yesterday and it had clove definition, and a number of leaves had yellowed, maybe 4-6 leaves.

1. Should I harvest all of my garlic now?

2. Is it going to taste bad if I leave it out too long or when the weather heats up?

3. What about elephant garlic?

All of this was planted last fall as organic cloves from the grocery store.

Thank you!

-Phil

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Comments (6)

Wendy
15 years ago
I have same ?
My garlic start to falling down, and had 2 yellow leave
I pulled out one head and it is just one single clove, big.

I am not sure if I should pull all of them out.
I used to pull out mine at the end of June or the week of July 4th. This year looks a difference.

Sorry Phil, I post my question here.

Thanks
Wendy
stevelau1911
15 years ago
I'm in upstate NY where it warms up very late and I usually wait until some time in July to pull them out because I want to make sure that the bulbs are fully formed. I've checked them out this year already and they are starting to form bulbs, but I think they reach their full potential once the stalks start to turn yellow which means the starch is going back into the bulbs.

Here is a link that might be useful: My garlic plants
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kristincarol
15 years ago
It does depend upon the variety, of course, my early variety will be coming out of the ground this week and the later ones in about three weeks. As suggested elsewhere on this forum, I wait until the bottom 4 leaves are completely dry and only 3 or 4 green leaves remain at the top of the stalk. I will have to harvest while the soil is still wet as we are having a long rainy season as we did last year.

If you leave the garlic in ground and get more rain then it may start to grow again and although that hasn't effected the taste in my experience it does cause them to not store as well.

So let the soil dry completely, if you are lucky to have dry weather and then harvest on.
cerri
15 years ago
I'm asking the same thing. I'd have thought it would be another month before harvest, but the leaves have turning brown and falling over for a week or two and now they've only got 2-3 leaves still green max! I pulled a couple of the most dried out ones, and they are definitely fully formed, but they're pretty small. I'm about to go out of town for a week, should I finish harvesting them now? I don't want to risk losing them.

http://i55.tinypic.com/rm8dib.jpg

http://i55.tinypic.com/rm8dib.jpg

http://i53.tinypic.com/5lnnno.jpg
cerri
15 years ago
woops, accidentally switched one of the pics. This one is of the bulbs I pulled today, one is peeled so you can see the cloves: http://i55.tinypic.com/f08d42.jpg
wcthomas
15 years ago
Yes I would pull those puppies. Your tops are pretty much dead so I would not expect any more bulb growth.

TomNJ