Leave them be. Snow isn't going to hurt them nor should freezing temps. This photo of my garlic was taken on April 15th last year and the nighttime temps dropped down to the low-20's for a couple nights. The garlic was fine. The cold did kill off my broccoli seedlings though.

Rodney

My garlic is coming up now too here in Minneapolis. The earliest shoots are a good 3-4" tall already. I think I will gamble on radishes, peas, potatoes and some onion seed this coming week. Also set sweet potatoes in the glasses and start the tomatoes and peppers under lights. Broccoli, multiplier onions and cabbages and maybe napa in a couple of weeks if the ground stays thawed.

My softneck garlic in Northern VA was planted about Oct 21, 2014 with a 4-inch layer of shredded leaves as mulch. Many of thegarlic shoots broke through the mulch before the cold of winter stopped their growth. Still too cold here to see any new growth. I have about 133 potential plants in a 5X10 plot.

Went out today and my garlic is coming up too. Sprouts are a couple inches tall. I pulled off the leaf mulch because half my garlic was yellow from sitting under it and I had several sprouts punching through leaves and I didn't want to strangle the poor sprouts. Sposed to drop back down temp wise for the next several days at least- but I'm not going to cover them back up now.

And parts of my raised beds of garlic had lost their leaf mulch earlier in the winter and I didn't realize it- and they got buried under a LOT of snow. But they survived just fine and are coming up just as healthy as the stuff that stayed under the mulch... so I probably wouldn't worry too much about putting more straw on top if you already got mulch going on.

The crazed wintertime deer nibbled off my garlic sprouts that came up in Fall. Will they recover from the bulb?

Peter - Do you have Italian deer? LoL. They will recover.

The deer in the winter are crazy! They eat anything.. they even stripped my xmas hollies!

Deer will eat most leaves, but they prefer some over others. I have seen them eat my sedums down to the ground and not touch the hostas growing next to them.

Should I rake away the leaf mulch I provided? It is soggy.

I never remove the mulch at all. It compacts down during the course of the winter, the garlic grows through it with no problem at all, and it helps suppress weeds and other issues as it grows.

My situation is related to this topic. My October planted garlic is now under two foot snow drifts which have frozen solid and are now ice. Over thirty years of growing garlic I usually have it under snow during the winter but never ice like this. Expect melting in the next week or two. I am way behind on fertilizing. Anyone had this kind of experience? Results?

Formerly Sconticut

My garlic was coming up when it arrived in the mail. I get bare root plants from a seller on e bay named Farmersbulk. I sometimes cover over after planting, if its going to be too cold. But, it really doesn't seem to hurt when things ice over.

I pulled away some of the mulch and there were lots of garlic sprouts having difficulty getting through it all... I'm glad I pulled some away! Got tons of garlic sprouting now!! Also, the mulch was rot city... I can't imagine that doesn't promote fungal disease in the garlic.

Mulch is meant to rot; so it depends on the type of rot whether your garlic will be affected either + or -. Probably nothing to worry about. Garlic like most other alliums are naturally quite antiseptic and normally take care of themselves pretty well.

You did the best by pulling back the mulch, but in the future you might look for a type of mulch that does not pack down so hard.

It was a mix of shredded leaves and wood chips. Next year I'll forego the wood chips.

One late season mulch I really like, is to let the grass grow long for the last mowing and then mow and bag it together with the fallen leaves. You get a real good mixture of green and brown that way, but don't put it on too deep in the fall. All you want is enough to break freeze/thaw cycles to stop frost heaving. Retain it and put it on deeper after you get top growth in the spring. The longer you can keep spring thawed ground cool the better early growth you will have for your garlic.

Some types of tree leaves also pack down tighter than others. Silver maple, elm, willow, for example shatter easier and stay "fluffier" than say Norway maple or sycamore, and are easier for emerging plants to penetrate early in the spring. It may actually pay to mix heavier substance leaves with lighter types as you run them through the shredder.

I didn't want to use the grass as it was probably full of weed seeds....

Any regularly mowed lawn would not likely have much if any weed seed after leaf drop in the autumn. Open pasture or woodland is another matter of course. If you resow lawn with new grass seed every autumn, that has to happen after the leaves are harvested anyway.

Well, I had areas that did not have grass that I just gave up and started mowing, so it was basically mowed weeds in some places....

The garlic under the mulch was yellow, and now a few days after pulling away the mulch, it is red. I hope it is going to recover. Looks like the sprouts were stuck under there all winter. I feel like it would have survived fine without any mulch at all, I sincerely doubt it really did anything to prevent the ground from freezing, I may skip it altogether next year.

Your garlic should be ok. The mulch isn't for adding hardiness anyway, garlic has that all on its own. The main purpose is to keep the ground from going through freeze thaw cycles that might push the cloves right out of the ground, breaking what roots had been developing.

I don't always get my garlics mulched in the fall and that doesn't seem to affect the end result much. I mulch then when I do to cut down on early spring weeding, but try to be careful not to mulch so heavily that the new sprouts cannot get through it.

Thanks OldDutch I appreciate the help

Most of my 132 cloves of garlic and pushed their way through the mulch and begun to grow. Some are 12 inches high.