So its really way too early to be harvesting garlic but some of my garlic stems were looking limp and feeling mushy.

I'm not an expert garlic grower but in previous years if the stem got mushy the garlic would start to get mushy. So I thought I'd dig a few up tp make sure the garlic wasn't starting to rot.

I typically start by scooping the dirt away from bulb with my hands. I prefer this over blindly sticking the spade into the ground. Even though I'm growing a ton of garlic, I'd be upset if I damaged any of the cloves out of carelessness.

Here's what the bulb looked like after I took it out of the ground. Well I actually peeled off some of the soggy outer layers first. As you can see this garlic doesn't have a solid outershell, which is preferred. This is a sign that the garlic wasn't quite ready to be harvested yet. But its a pretty big size and I already tore apart its roots...so its going to the kitchen!

I then dug up another bulb to have two samplings of their progress.

As you can see this garlic is even less developed than the previous. Ideally I would've wanted to harvest this later but its neat to see the garlic growth progression. In fact, I may intentionally harvest some of my garlic early and often next year just to study its growth.

Even though several of the stems are getting soggy, based on these samplings I'm going to wait to harvest the rest. Its going to be a little bit of a gamble...but as long as I am observant I believe I will end up with a good garlic harvest.

Oh and I forgot to mention, I typically harvest garlic in June or July.