Last week we noticed that the tops of our garlic plants had died off quite extensively, indicating that it was time to pull them out of the ground and harvest their bulbs.

Carefully making sure that that we did not get them mixed up, we first pulled up some of my plants.

Next we pulled up Mrs. JP’s plants.

The result of our long experiment?

There seemed to be no difference at all between the bulbs that were planted early and those that were planted late.

On a side note, a local neighbor of ours named Mori-san had three or four years of failed garlic crops and asked us what our secret was. I told him about what I read on the Internet about waiting until the first frost to plant. Normally he had been planting quite early in the autumn, but this year he waited for the cold weather to arrive. I am happy to say that Mori-san called today to thank us for the advice and to report that he ended up with a magnificent crop for the first time this year.