For hardneck garlic, there generally are no more leaves once the scape shows up. I never counted either them nor the softnecks. Right now my 7th leaves are starting to shoot from the core of the stem, I am expecting scapes very soon - perhaps instead of this one or the next leaf. Japanese didn't scape out very well last year, but Music, Siberian, and VietNamese Red did. The first two look like they are very close to ready now with the VN Red both a bit smaller and a bit behind.

Bearing in mind that this is Minnesota I would say that either we get an early harvest this year or perhaps some real nice bulb sizes. (Both would be nice.) Some of the plant already have stems as thick as a grown man's thumbs, which I take to be a very good sign of increased eventual bulb size.

I generally pay far more attention to what leaves start to yellow and die back from the bottom up as it approaches time to harvest. I also try to dig a bit early rather a bit late if I have a choice. I do not generally save bulbils; so I cut out the scapes at about full curl or a bit sooner. It takes longer for those who allow the bulbils to mature for the full plant to reach digging stage. It will stay full green longer as it develops the bulbils.

Harvest with garlic is more of an art than anything else, but digging and curing early, while there is still green foliage, is better than late, because slightly early digs still cure nicely, even if they may take longer to do so, while late digs more tend to fall apart into separate cloves which shortens storage.

Glad to know. I think there are still many ways to improve the crops, from planting to fertilizing, soil conditioning etc. At least it will be better next season.

I just happened to have counted the leaves on the largest of each garlic type last night here in Missouri. My Music, German extra hardy, Siberian, Purple Glazer, and Estonia Red were starting to grow their 9th leaf. Metechi was sprouting #8. Chesnok Red, Persian Star, Russian Red, Yugoslavian, Martin's Heirloom, and Spanish Roja #7 and Lorz Italian (SN) only has 6 so far. No sign of scapes yet but shouldn't be more than 2 weeks out. some of the largest plants are nearly 4' tall if I stretch out the leaves.

I normally judge the earliness of the spring by when my species daylilies bud out and bloom. I have H lilioasphodelus and middendorffii both heavily budded and will start bloom within the next week or so with warm weather. That is about as early a I can remember. That means the garlic gets a real long spring growing season this year, which I see validated in my yard by a very early and robust start; so barring unforeseen problems up here 2015 looks like a primo garlic year. I am paying special attention to watering and side dressing, too, hoping to help everything along!!

I gotta say that this is the best spring growth I have ever seen on my garlics, and it is still weeks earlier than Memorial Day.

I am in the same boat down here except I use the morel mushroom as my gauge of spring earliness. This year I started finding morels on south facing slopes on 4/8 which is 10-14 days earlier than normal. My garlic began greening up the first week of March and I have been side dressing every 10 days or so with either granular urea or urea dissolved in water depending on if rain was expected.

As to watering, I have not had to other than the times I have fertilized with urea water. Every time I stick my finger in below the leaf mulch the soil is nicely moist. It just finished raining overnight here and heavy rain is expected this weekend so I won't be watering garlic any time soon and I expect I won't have to at all this year. I do think I will lightly fertilize one more time this weekend and let the rain wash it thru the mulch. I guess snaking the soaker hoses thru my garlic beds last fall was a waste of time and I can pull them out to use on my corn patch.

My soil is sandy. Without the water hose I wouldn't have gotten much of anything out of anything in the past few years. The fertilizer I have settled on using is Milorganite which never burned a blade of grass for me back when I was doing lawns, even when spilled. I also have put in a lot of composted manure and peat moss (core this year) which just seems to disappear. Mulch does help conserve the moisture. No question about that.

LOL some of my garlic, that which sprouted last fall, was green all winter, not dying back but taking off pretty much from where it left off with only a little tip burn. I was surprised to see that.

Morels are just now starting up here, which is pretty early for us, too.

Yea the glaciers didn't quite make it down to my neck of the woods to deposit all the sand and glacier rocks like it did up north. Your soil sounds like my youngest brother's soil at his weekend property on the Buffalo river in Wisconsin...Pure sand but easy to dig! I gave him some Music, German EH, and Spanish Roja last fall and he said it is growing well.

I have never seen Milorganite sold around here at the big box stores. I do have to be very careful with the urea so as not to burn the plants as I think I did on some onions and shallots. I use only 2 oz for each 4x10 bed whether applied granularly or dissolved but I fertilize 6 or 7 times from early March to early May as well a the 2" of composted chicken manure and some Espoma garden tone applied before planting in the fall.

Good luck on the Morels! I did not have a great year but managed to find enough for a few meals. They may still be popping here but the undergrowth is getting too high now and ticks are pretty bad so I won't bother again.

I get my Milorganite from my local ACE hardware. I avoid the Big Box stores as much as I can. Milorganite is also showing up in the retail nurseries more and more, too. It has been the darling of golf courses and their greens keepers for years now, which is where I found out about it - from a friend who was a grounds keeper for a golf course, and that was decades ago. I was always afraid of potential heavy metal content for food plant use, but the tests clear it of that anymore, and it is very easy to use. Not cheap though.

Where I am now is not so sandy as a lot of real river bottoms, but it sure is different from the black dirt over clay subsoil I grew up on in NW Iowa. That was also glacier free lying just south of the Buffalo Ridge in SW Minn/ E SDak that split the last glacier into the two lobes that then went around us. Never had to pick a stone out of the fields on the home place.

I hate ticks and we have them, in spades. So I don't spend too much time in the woods these days.

My Music, German extra hardy, and Estonia Red are all growing leaf #11 now. Still expecting scapes to pop out any minute.

Old dutch, there has been some discussion on using the Milorganite with garden. Just my personal preference, I do not use any in-organic or anything like Milorganite. Some of the contents are considered "safe", but there is still some content, or trace. I'd rather use human urine on edibles.

No weed killers on my lawn for two years. No plan to change it. Have a large compost pile. A lot of wood chip mulches....