Bettering the Odds on Fall Emergence

So, we've had an interesting Autumn here in the Stratford area. Very warm for a long time. The snow did not even stick around much after Christmas. I am sure some of us garlic growers are concerned about those green shoots emerging in pretty little rows across the garlic plot. Is it spring already, the garlic is asking?
Did we get planted too soon?
Well, above-ground growth in garlic plants in Autumn-Winter is not a flag ship for disaster, at least not here, and not if the leaves are only about four to six inches (10 - 15 cm).

One thing that I have noticed with different varieties is that the ones that have a shorter storage potential are the first to come up in the fall if it stays warm. For example, Turbans (the variety that usually only keeps for 2 months until they start sprouting), and Rocamboles ( they usually dry out clove by clove by the new year, and easily start putting out roots and/or shoots if they get even a whiff of cold while in storage). Strains from those two types are invariably among the first to poke out of the ground, from what I've observed in my informal trials, year after year.
If you can, and if you are concerned about it, planting those varieties last, or as late as possible, is one way to even the playing field on fall emergence.

 Golden Acres Farm has nice clay loam soil, which is fairly heavy if you don't know how to manage it (or can't because of weather and timing).The advantages of clay include a bigger holding capacity of cation minerals due to the negative (anion) charge in fine clay particles. Clay also makes it easier to build and maintain organic matter in the soil, and helps to regulate soil moisture during drought periods. The down side is that if you miss the planting window for garlic in the fall, you usually don't get much of a second chance where the soil gets dry enough. For those of you who have sand, and don't understand the problem, let me help you - I'm a farmer, not a brick layer, and I prefer my soil loose and permeable. Lumpy makes me grumpy.
We usually plant our garlic earlier than our neighbors because we are especially involved with the concept that soil matters. Most would say we plant too soon.

 In 2007 we planted a fair-sized plot, and because we were upping our amounts, we got seed from another grower. Our start date for planting was September 18, and we planted most of the plot in four days (except for some gift seed, new varieties we only just received in October).
So, fall was like this: warm then cool, and often sunny. On October 21, daytime temp was in the low twenties (Celsius), a week later it had frosted overnight. I walked out and accessed the growth. I could see very distinctly that only certain kinds had come up, mainly Rocamboles, a group who's early growth I understood instinctively, because that variety has poor natural dormancy. Another way to put it is that Rocamboles have evolved and adapted to respond immediately to temperature fluctuation, by growing.
 The other garlic strains that had come up were more perplexing; a Porcelain and a Marbled Purple Stripe, two varieties that usually have very good storage potential. They were also only up on some rows, and not others. The answer became more obvious when I noticed that it was the rows from outsourced seed that were 4 - 6 inches out of the ground. Those same strains of Porcelain and Marbled Purple Stripe planted from our own seed were still safely tucked in the ground.
I had known that the grower we got seed from stored his garlic in a non-insulated garage, and I saw him leave boxes of it in the sun for a period of time, something that we were always particular not to do, because we didn't want to break the dormancy of our seed, in case we ended up selling some of it as eating garlic.
 After that year we had a new reason to keep our garlic seed warm (generally above 10 Celsius) and out of the sun - from that point on we understood that we were manipulating the dormancy period so that we could plant earlier if we had to.
  As a practice it is not fool proof, but even delaying "up-stairs" growth so that the leaves are shorter come snowfall or freeze-off, may help if you get caught with a warm autumn.

That being said, above-ground growth did not show up as a reason for yield loss on our harvest that year, even though some plants were 4 - 6 inches tall in the fall. The stem of a garlic plant stays protected underground all through the growing period, and new leaves will appear from the stem in spring. The main issue is energy loss, and a little of that may be recouped by the energy that the leaves gather while they are there in the fall. So if you see the little green rows out there, don't panic. There's no point anyway, 'cause there was nothing you could do. (Unless you mulched with straw (or a similar natural material, and not black plastic) right after planting, which does help moderate the effect of sun and temperature, like an insulating blanket over the rows.)

And remember, "Better Late than Never" is not the best adage for garlic planting either. Sometimes late planting (November/December) doesn't allow enough time for the garlic to set roots and establish its self, leading to discouragingly small bulbs at harvest.