On Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:20:54 -0500, songbird
wrote:

George wrote:

A lot of our soft-neck garlic has reasonable-sized (for us, anyway)
heads, but the cloves seem smaller and more numerous than past years..
Our hard-neck, grown in the same bed, is normal, or maybe even better
than usual in this regard. I could be just mis-remembering, but the
change seems pronounced.

Anyway, I'm wondering if there's a 'that means ...' for this. We used
less manure than in the past, but tried to compensate with more 5-10-5.

Zone 5+, Syracuse NY
Planted 11/7; up 4/1; harvested 7/3, after they fell over.

we had two periods of dry weather this past
year that affected about everything grown.

did you guys have a mid-spring drought?

No. Actually, it was kind of wet, IIRC. BUT, I do mix some peat mossy
stuff into the garlic bed, and I'm probably not terribly consistent with
it, year-to-year. So, drainage might have made it drier. Would dry
cause small cloves & (reasonably) large heads?

G