Split Garlic

Hi

I am not sure if that is the correct way to describe my garlic but normally I would have bulbs with the individual cloves inside a reasonably tough outer skin.  This year (my fifth) I have the cloves but they are all individual, small and with no outer skin.  I only harvested today (waiting for a dry few days seemed pointless) and they taste ok.  We had an extrmely dry period during March and I did not water - could that be the reason.  The only down side seems to be that it is a pain harvesting, preparing and, I imagine, storing them.  Any ideas why they go this way would be gratefully received.  Cheers

Hi bobloes, I seem to have exactly the same symptoms with my garlic, it is just as you describe it. I have only harvested 2 plants and that is because an animal, next doors cat I suspect, bent them over. I wondered if it was simply that they are not ready yet as there are only 2 yellowing leaves on each plant. However they don't look as if they would have formed a normal garlic bulb at any time. One of my thoughts is opposite to yours in that we had an extremely wet Jan, Feb and March (my onions in the other half of the bed had to taken out as they had rotted!), although the garlic seemed to be ok. Last year was my first with garlic and it was ok but small and this years looked  a lot more promising.....until now. I'm going down to my local garden centre tomorrow to see if they can shed any light on the problem.

I would put it down to weather conditions. If the cloves are hard and useable then don`t worry about it. dry them off and treat as normal for storing.