Kitchen Garden Forum

Hope someone can help me with this -

My garlic is looking quite large compared to last few years (not difficult - it was rubbish )but it has started to flower now. I usually harvest it in July but wondered if i should do it now?

I cut the flowers off the top but dont know whethter to leave it now or cut my losses and dig it up

Help please

Seedling

there are 2 types of garlic, hardneck, which form a seedhead, and softneck, which doesn't, you probably have a hardneck type, do you remember what it was called? hardneck garlic doesn't store as well as softneck, but i believe the taste is supposed to be superior. garlic is garlic as far as i'm concerned!

Flowers are not a problem, you can eat them.

Hello Seedling! You did the right thing by cutting off the flower heads. I dug my hardneck (flowering) garlic up last week, and it is enormous! Hardnecks are supposed to harvested in May, as long as they were planted early enough (Oct/Nov?) My softneck won't be ready for a few more weeks yet...
Go for it, I say, then you can enjoy it all the sooner.
Emma.

I always break off the flower stalks as soon as I see them since I found that you get much larger bulbs than if you let them put their energy into producing flowers as well.