Growing garlic is supposed to relatively simple: you set the cloves 4-8" apart in the fall at daffodil time, mulch for the winter, feed in the early spring, keep weeded, remove the seed scapes, and then wait for the tops to dry down. Then you pull the bulbs, let them dry a few days, and Voila!
Of course that is if the weather decides to cooperate. This year no go on that: rain when we don't want it (cold, too) and dry (and hot) when we want the cooling rains. Oh, well...that's what make it fun, right?
The garlic tops at this point are so trashed by the drought that I don't see how they can really photosynthesize anymore, and we have a nice 4-5 day period of dry weather coming up, so this morning I decided to force the issue. I went down the length of the garlic bed and bent / broke the stems just a few inches above the bulb.
The shock of that will force the bulbs to bulk up and dry down for dormancy (storage in human terms!) which should only take a couple of days. Then I will pull the plants and let them dry a day or so on the bed surface before moving them to screens in the garage just as I did with the shallots.
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