In article ,
"Terry Coombs" wrote:

But today was reading to wiat until the tops were all brown . These were
planted last October ...

All brown you won't have a decent wrapper, and you will have dirt in the
cloves. You want 3-4 green leaves, indicating 3-4 layers of wrapper on
the bulbs. I used to wait too long, so I know from experience.

Drying needs to be in full shade, protected from dew. Commercial growers
use wagons with a sunshade so the plants are shaded as soon as they are
dug up. Got a barn/shed, a covered porch, something like that? I have
used various methods over time; the easiest one was laid on some crap
bookshelves I diverted from going to the dump, inside an airy barn -
just laid the plants out in single layers on the shelves and left them.
I have also tied them in bunches of 5 on a long string and hung it,
placed them on screens and hauled the screens inside every night and
various other things that are more work. If you have adequate space to
set them on a shelf and leave them be for a few weeks, it's the lowest
work input / handling way to deal with them I've found so far.

Hardnecks (scaping garlic) are virtually impossible to braid, so after a
few weeks drying I cut the bulk of the foliage off and store them in a
bin. I'm essentially out of growing softnecks at this point, as the ones
I was growing petered out and the hardnecks seem to do better for me,
here.

While sorting/drying I set aside the nicest heads for seed, and have
eventually both read and seen that I need to set aside enough nice large
heads that I can use only the nice large cloves for seed, and eat the
small cloves from the seed heads when the seed heads are broken up for
planting.

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