I live and garden outside of Austin, TX, and was searching to see if anyone had the same problem that I had with my garlic crop. The crop was doing great, but about 4 weeks ago I noticed that most of the crop was showing yellowing of the leaves. Usually the leaves start drying and withering successively from the ground up, so this didn't seem right. The yellowing kept getting worse, so I dug one plant up a couple of weeks ago and saw that the leaves were splitting below the ground. Because the leaves were withering, I harvested the whole bed. I would say that 20% or less have proper coverage of the garlic head. The rest had splitting with exposure of the garlic cloves. The crop is drying and curing right now. I think the garlic will be good for cooking but are very ugly. I guess but don't know for sure if they will store well.

I don't know what happened! We had a lot of fall/winter rains, a rare snow in February, a dry spell in April and early May. I don't remember when I first started growing garlic, but it has to have been over 15 years ago. This has never happened before.

I waited for an answer here but nobody answered my question for a while. So I did some further reading and went ahead dug out my garlics. Mine was actually getting ready for harvest, the lower leaves were yellow, which explained the split outerlayer on the bulb. The top leaves were green. The garlics are of a good size as well, with clearly big segmented cloves.

I don't know what happened to yours. So yours were yellowing at the same time on all the leaves on the same garlic? Maybe the dry spell was to blame?

Well, all the indications are that you are getting close to the harvest time.
You wouldn't expect your garlics stay green for ever, would you? I wouldn't.
Another indication is that the stems will start shrinking, getting thinner and falling down.
There we go again, they are getting ready to retire.

I would let them to shrink and dry up more and then dig them up and cure them
(with the stems on) in the shade with good air flow.

I AM IN THE SAME SITUATION, BTW.

We've been growing garlic for many years and just harvested last month. The heads have been drying and curing in a well-ventilated shed, like always. Over the weekend we started cleaning the heads for sale and over half of them are split! The tops of the cloves are not covered in skin and they will not store this way.

Any idea why this happened? It has never happened before to nearly the entire crop like this. We have had a wet spring and it has been warmer than usual. The garlic was planted last fall.

If it was something we did wrong I would love to know what so as to avoid it next year!

Thanks!

Too much water at the end of their season is what causes the wrappers to split. And, yes, they will not store well without the wrapper.

We had 120% of normal rainfall here this year and everyone I know, commercial growers and hobbyists alike, had good percentages of their crop do this. I'd say mine was about 1/5 of the total and even heads which were fully covered at harvest split during the process of curing. This effected my Early Italian Purple and also a small amount of the Italian Late. Korean Red and German White are fine although I have only harvested a small amount of the German.

Other time I had this happen several years ago was when I forgot and watered the Italian Purple too late in the season (thinking they were the Germans.)

Too much water, eh? Well that would certainly apply, we got a huge amount of rain up until the middle of June and garlic harvest had to be worked around dry days.

It all looked wonderful coming out of the ground, huge heads for the most part, but the splitting must have occurred during the curing process because it has become very obvious during the cleaning.

At least it is not something we messed up on and we can hope for a better crop next year.

Thank you so much!

I will get in on to. My first year on garlic but it did not dry from the bottom up. All the leaves turned yellow at the tips the stems got weak and started to have a rotten look to them. We had a very wet June and I am sure that caused the problem. I think I harvested in time, the wrappers are not split, but drying down is hard. 6-1/2 inch of rain in 7 days and the ground is saturated I had to wash off the mud to even give the cloves a chance to start drying.Luckily my harvest is small and I can find room to dry down in my back porch. Oh, It is still wounder full great tasting garlic

Curt~

It's not just down south. Here in Indiana, we harvested our garlic yesterday, but I think I could have done it two weeks ago. Some of my heads were split with no wrappers. All that rain in the spring brought us some good sized heads though, so no complaints here.

When I harvested the first of my garlic the soil was still very wet and water poured out of the stems as I held them upside down to pull off a couple layers of wrapper. I had never seen that before.

Most of the garlic I have seen at our farmers market was huge and friends who grow are reporting a very good crop. And, after all, we can still eat and plant our split wrapper heads, eh?

Here in texas if it rains too much at the end of growing season if it rains too much i cover my beds with a tarp or plastic, this helps the cracking, also mulching no matter where you live.

Yes, we had a cold and icy winter, cool dry (drought status) spring. then when our garlic started putting up the scapes, we had 3 inches in 3 days of rain, then constant little rain. When the leaves started drying down. We had 5 inch deluge. So far I have harvested 3 kinds of garlic and over half are naked of the cover. A few of each large with a cover, will save to plant. Have not harvested our main crop, which we have been growing for while and is more used to our conditions. Hope it is in better shape than the new ones we tried last year. I think the covers rotted over the very wet May and early June. The varieties I have harvested so far are Siberian, Russian Red, and Purple Glazer.

As already mentioned, bulbs with split wrappers will not store well... but all is not lost. Split bulbs can be eaten first, dehydrated, or used for planting. Save the best bulbs for long-term storage.

I am currently freezing the cloves from the bulbs with no or reduced cover layers. We are also eating quite a bit of the cloves and my sweat now smells garlicky which is anti tick and mosquito protection.

Question that I cannot find answered. When can I start to freeze cloves from fresh garlic that has split bulbs? Right after harvest or after after curing

I'm not sure there is a definitive answer. When I froze my garlic, I did so after the Fall planting was complete (in October). By that point, all cloves were well cured, and presumably lower in moisture. All cloves were peeled & frozen in a zippered freezer bag. As long as the peeled cloves are dry, they won't stick together, and could be removed as needed.

That frozen garlic was just OK. The cloves lost quite a bit of their flavor, and did not hold their shape if cooked. I find that dehydration preserves more of the flavor, stores longer without refrigeration, and can be easily ground into fresh garlic powder as needed. I slice the cloves into 1/4" pieces, they dry into very hard chips which hold their shape if added to cooked dishes. I place crushed dried garlic in a pepper mill... fresh ground garlic has the same flavor advantages as fresh ground black pepper.

Although I usually peel garlic before dehydration, I've been able to skip that when processing small hard-to-peel cloves, or large quantities. If the root end is cut off & the cloves sliced with skin on, that skin can be shaken off & winnowed away after dehydration.

great info and ideas. I am just going thru the curing part now, maybe 2-3 weeks. Then the cloves that are split and will not keep I have to decide whether to freeze whole cloves, chop in a blender and freeze in cubes, or dehydrate ( had not thought of that before your mention) I really do not have a huge quantity of split cloves, maybe 10 so have to pick one technique and try it.