What you describe is typical garlic behavior here in our climate. It will make great growth spurts in warm spells and then will come through the cold spells just fine. At the absolute worst, you might see a little tipburn on the tips of the leaves if the weather gets really cold, but it will be minor and it won't harm the crop any. Garlic is very resilient and will tolerate cold temperatures (at least the kind of cold we get here in OK most winters) just fine. I don't think I've even seen much damage to speak of when the temperatures have dropped into the single digits.

You don't have to give garlic much attention. I plant mine in the fall (or in the winter if I didn't get around to it in fall), mulch it, and forget about it. About the only thing that will cause problems with garlic is very wet soil, so I grow mine in raised beds. In late spring or early summer, when enough leaves have begun to die back, I harvest it, cure it and put it into storage....and use it.

Don't worry. All is well. As long as your garlic isn't in heavily waterlogged soil, winter isn't going to hurt it.

Dawn

Thanks, it is in a raised bed so I am just going to let nature take its course, which right now seems to be more dry than wet.

You're welcome. Yep, I agree that having it be too dry is more likely to be the current issue. We've lived here since 1999 and I can only think of two years when we had enough rain to really hurt anything....2004 and 2007, although 2009 had a rough month with a few dicey weeks afterward. In all those other years, drought has been a fairly constant companion. In the rare years that we get enough actual rainfall, I am shocked by how big and healthy the garlic gets. I'm more used to the dry, drought-stunted plants.