Spread some mulch around them and they'll be fine. Garlic greens are very hardy. In years where there is several inches of top growth before the ground freezes the most damage I've seen is that the leaf tips (maybe the first couple inches) get froze and turn brown. Never had them completely die back to the ground.

Rodney

Have you had top growth of 6" to 10"? Then I think most of the top growth will be gone, turned yellow. Some can be planted in early September, or even earlier....

Some folks are new in growing garlic....

I wouldn't get worked up about it. Mulch well after most of the heavy fall rains, and they'll kick off well, with a much more developed root system, when it warms up in spring. Probably the only thing I would ensure in spring is to make sure to fertilize well, and maybe spread some wood ashes, lime, or whatever you use to make sure the pH doesn't get too low. The reason to plant in fall is to get that root network established. The reason not to plant too early is so that not too much of the stored energy from the bulb is used up growing tops that won't go to building the heads of garlic we want. Garlic is very hardy, and I've seen very little damage to the plants because of cold weather. If you recognize that more of the reserve was used up growing tops in the fall, you just compensate by feeding well once new growth starts in the spring. Easy!

Last year I planted garlic on 10/31. Here is a picture of the garlic on 12/7.

Here is the garlic on 2/28. I had to take the mulch off and dry it because it was a soggy mess. After it was dry I put the mulch back on the bed.

Here is the garlic harvested on 05/30.
We had an exceptionally cold winter last year. I do not know if I needed to but I did cover the garlic anytime the temps went below 25 degrees F. We get very little snow here and it melts the following day so there is no insulating from the snow. There were a few nights when the temps went below 20 degrees F. Can anyone tell me if it was really necessary to cover the garlic given these temps.

Here is the photo of the garlic I'm concerned about. The cloves were planted in early September, and the photo was taken in likely mid September.

This looks like to be in a large raised planter, or raised bed, not sure. The planter warm and cold much faster than in ground. So I believe the top growth will be very substantial this fall and early winter. Then all the top not mulched will be frozen to ground. What to expect next spring?

Garlic top growth will not be frozen to the ground. Some of the tips may freeze, but most of the tops stay just fine even in the cold. I really see no reason to cover garlic, even when temperatures get very cold. I certainly mulch well, but that is mainly to maintain moist soil and help prevent heaving and thawing and wild swings in a harsh winter. If a good root system is developed prior to any hard freezing (the goal of fall planting), then no matter the condition of the tops once it warms (so long as you didn't let them dry out completely), everything will grow well in the spring. Think of all the other bulbs we plant that take off in the spring and produce flowers. Garlic isn't all that different.

drmbear, what zone are you? I'm in Zone 6 and all my garlic greens were frozen to ground last winter. But since they were only 2-3" tall above soil, they came up nicely in spring.

You mentioned bulbs. But the bulbs normally would not grow other than in spring. Also, the flowering bulbs are normally much larger.

But this is a different story since the top growth can be as much as 10". I do not know if the original garlic cloves would even exist. If not, you just have the roots and a stub of about 3" to 4" of garlic plant below the mulch.

I have had tops both frozen to the ground and not more than tip burned over winter here in Minneapolis which is zone 4 and in both cases the plants came back just fine in the spring. Temps here can get to -25 F and lower, and even unmulched garlic generally winters pretty well.

This year I have a small bed of summer planted cloves from a hardneck that never did send up scapes, but has some single clove bulbs to over an inch. Those still have full fledged tops and will stay in the ground over this coming winter just to see what will happen. As of now, we are due to get frosted this weekend.

I have a whole forest of shoots in my tree onions that I expect will winter over just fine, too. The hardneck garlics and many of the softnecks are very hardy as are most of the tree onions.

I wouldn't worry about your shoots so long as the bed is well drained.

Old, glad to know. This is not my bed. I would not have planted them this early. I'm going to ask them to see what happens next spring.

For your summer planted, so the tops are still green? Then how do you know they have the rounds?

I have some garlic from last season that just disappeared since I dug them late. So they will be my volunteer garlic next year. They did not come up this summer. I figure they are not cold treated. I need to take care of them next spring.

Over the course of the summer I have dug a couple to check. The last one was about a week ago and it was about a quarter in diameter. This set were the surviving cloves from a set of hardneck bulbs that had mostly dried out in warm storage. They had not been subject to any cooling period since they were dug in August of 2014, and all sprouted quickly when planted in June of 2015. Not one of them sent up a scape either this year, but all stand up to about 12" to 15" tall with almost no drying leaves nor has that situation changed at all for a long time. They haven't been watered either after they showed good initial growth. The real question in my mind was whether I could get large single rounds out of the small cloves. I think I can at this point but I do not know if I can get them to cure. I may have to use them green. The second question is whether they will winter from an early summer planting, which I think is likely, and then hopefully produce an increased size bulb next summer.

edit: garlic almost certainly needs a rest period before it can sprout, but I do not think it needs cooling for that. What it needs cooling for is to start the blooming scape (sorta sounds like tulips doesn't it - same sort of thing IMO). I do not store my garlic cold, but rather at room temperature in a corner of the kitchen. The variety in the summer bed sends up scapes real easily when fall planted and wintered over in the ground. Even bulbils often do. But this summer bed never showed a single bolt. I intend to do this again perhaps on a larger scale depending on what this set of two dozen cloves ends up producing. So far whatever they end up doing they are all behaving very much alike, really uniform to this point.

From what you described, you planted the cloves in June. Now they have full top and a small round below the soil level. Based on what I've planted before, I think the top will die down when winter comes. They will produce small rounds, over-winter and sprout again in spring. The current plants would probably not going to produce full garlic bulbs.

Keep us posted.

One thing already answers a question that mature cloves can revert to rounds. The current rounds are already the size of the mature feral bulbs I collected a couple of years back. Those original tinies had a full set of cloves which were of course minuscule. A couple of seasons now have nearly tripled the size of the bulbs I am getting what with the better spacing, rich beds and scape removal. But even then the plants are only about half the size of my Music. This particular summer bed is quite a bit smaller than that, too, actually much shorter.

I know this variety is hardy as a stone and quite tolerant of heavy soils, too, since it maintained itself feral in an open prairie portion of zone 4 in a good heavy clay loam for almost 3 decades. I expect this one to winter over and do so probably partially evergreen. I do not expect it to die back completely. Whatever winters over will scape out and then divide into cloves almost certainly. Bulbils of this particular strain very often will scape and then make tiny divided bulbs in the very first season, if fall planted.

I don't ever expect this one to make the size of Music or Siberian, but inch and a half bulbs would be very welcome. This is a family heirloom and is a prolific and hardy, if small, variety. I am just curious what all I can do with it.

If what folks here said are correct (I believe so), then it may be better to plant the cloves early, like late August or so. When the top growth is up, we can harvest most of the garlic green to consume. Then the garlic plants can fully overwinter and grow as regular garlic in spring?

But I think the new cloves have to be from last year's, not this year's. Otherwise, the left-over garlic in the ground this season would grow in one or two months, from July to September. But we all know the volunteer garlic does not grow this fall. Garlic does need some resting.

What I still do not understand is what makes garlic to die down. If I plant seed cloves in April, May, June, July, August, which batch would make rounds and die down, and which batch would stay green? I believe garlic days to maturity is 90 days. So the cloves planted July and earlier should die down and grow rounds. The cloves grow September would likely stay green, until winter. I have no proof...

Well my June planted cloves still haven't died down. I suspect that daylength has been going the wrong way for them. These did have a huge rest period though no cooling. We still haven't been frosted either yet here in Minneapolis. I have a lot of green tomatoes yet on a couple of my vines.

I really don't think there is any doubt that garlic will perform differently under different planting regimens. Just how differently is a good question and is probably complicated by some variation between the various types much like there is some difference in latitude preference and performance.

I got my main beds ready yesterday. Should be nice and mellow for regular planting in about a week and a half or so, although I am getting impatient and probably won't wait quite that long.

The thing is that, garlic has to rest. It can't grow for 5 months or longer without any rest, or mature. But I only tried once, in early summer and the plants died down in fall, leaving small rounds. This is something interests me to see the results from planting them in different seasons.

It appears the intention of growing the garlic early is to harvest the garlic greens once, just like how folks harvest chives and green onion. Then the garlic greens would grow back again before they go to winter rest.

It appears no harm is done to the garlic green. If this is true, then it appears there is advantage in doing so.

Anyone has experience with this?