Kitchen Garden Forum

I planted some garlic in a trough in the cold greenhouse last autumn. It was some that I bought on holiday in France for cooking.
Anyway it grew really well - still is although now it is outside. A comment from a fellow plot holder was "Are they young leeks?" They do look very much like leeks.

I visited a walled kitchen garden this week and found some plants looking just like my garlic plants with a label saying Rocambole. Having browsed the internet it appears this is what I am growing and it is a hard necked garlic. Anyone grown any and any tips as to when it will be ready to harvest as at the moment the plants are just getting bigger!!

This is an excerpt from my website
Deciding when to harvest the bulbs is always a tricky decision. It is most likely to be May or June in the South, and June or July in the North of the UK. If the weather has been wet for some time, the garlic tends to continue to grow, but if dry, you will suddenly see the garlic leaves start to die down and go yellow or brown. Lift one of the plants and check that the roots are dying back and the papery covering to the bulb is nice and dry.
I think that you may have to wait a bit to see if there are any flower stalks, before deciding if you have hardneck or softneck garlic.
Can you remember how many garlic cloves, each of your heads of garlic had before you planted them? Hardneck garlics tend to have fewer, bigger cloves than softneck.

Hi Glallotments,
Googled a bit and found this American website;

http://www.wegrowgarlic.com/7422.html

Hope this helps you.
JB.

Thank's both - I'll have a browse. The plants do look totally different from the other garlic that I am growing and I guess I must have had nine cloves to the bulb as I planted them all in the trough and so I just counted the plants.

I never realised there were so many garlic varieties!!

If it is Rocambole you will find the flower stalk grows into a twisty shape; that's why it's also called "serpentine garlic". It seems to be a earlier variety, so May-June round here in Bedford is when I'd expect to harvest it.
mike

Harvest garlic when the lowest three leaves have turned yellow.