For years, I’ve been successfully harvesting my shallots in late June and my garlic around July 4. It worked splendidly until I moved out to Goochland (central Virginia.) For some reason, I’ve been having a lot of Garlic issues with my old planting and harvesting schedule. So, this year I am changing it up.
I harvest one batch of both garlic and shallots today. Instead of leaving them to dry under an overhang in my smaller stable, I decided to let them dry inside this time. So, earlier harvesting and lower temperatures from the start. Only one garlic plant looked suspect, but a couple did look like they did not clove out (I plan to tackle the latter problem with an earlier October planting than before.)
I think that waiting to harvest them the first week of July gave the pests a little time to damage some of the bulbs.
As to other notes about this year, the Winter was plenty cold and the heat really never got here until we got into June. It was nowhere near as brutally hot as it has been in the Springs of the last several years.