How soon or late can I harvest garlic just to keep it going?

Hi All,
I've got some stuff going on with my wife, which means I have extremely limited access to our property and specifically the garden where I planted 300 garlic last fall. I don't know if I will be able to get permission to be there exactly when they should be harvested, and I'm wondering how much leeway I have? Can I harvest them a few weeks early or late? Normally in our area they are ready at the end of June or early July. These are garlic that I have had for 4 years now, and I would like to keep them going if I can. I'm not really worried about storage or size this year, I just want to get them out and replanted this fall to continue the line (... or the clones, I suppose they actually are).

Any garlic gurus around? Thanks.

**Edit - to be specific, I have no access to the property and currently cannot even have a friend go check.

Later is probably better than earlier, we often don't get to ours until the end of July. Usually waiting until after the leaves are going brown. We're growing a hard neck red garlic. We didn't have as good results letting soft neck go that long, but also can't remember trying to get those out earlier or if it was any better...

I don't know if your sticky situation allows you to know anything about the progress of the crop?
Another thing to do is cut the scapes to get better bulbs. Maybe friends that are on good terms to let you know if scapes are on? Or a friend that could cut those for you?
Good thing is 300 would be quick digging to clear them out.

I wouldn't harvest early, early June for example.  The cloves will be tiny, that will negatively affect next year's crop.  Garlic cloves are just starting to swell right now.

Harvesting late ... some potential (if risky) benefits, especially if the weather stays dry.  Clove size will be maxed out, the problem will be when the underground paper wrappers die and decay.  Cloves will be unprotected from the soil, resulting in ugly dirty cloves that may not last long enough for re-planting 4-5 months ahead.  If it rains a lot in July, the wrapper decay will be even quicker, and the cloves will start to rot as well, as the plant will be close to dead by month's end and it's warm and moist and the bacteria love those conditions.

So, to answer your question, I would not pull early, of course try to harvest the ideal time first week in July or so, if not, then at least *some* time in July.  You'll be ok if the soil is dry.

Garlic dies back in summer, but will make new leaves in autumn and live another year, although the individual cloves may be a little smaller because they are more crowded. I am letting the garlic grow in a semi-wild manner, because they are so happy here, coexisting with the meadow grasses and self-seeding with bulblets. The first-year plants actually seem to like it better among the weeds. If you simply want to keep the variety alive, then maybe you could leave them in the ground, or dig the clumps up for transplanting-- alliums are very tolerant of being transplanted. For eating, you probably could harvest the green garlic until the ground freezes, and perhaps store them like other roots.

If all you want is to keep it going, you don't need to harvest at all. Left in the ground, the garlic will continue to grow and multiply as clumps, becoming so dense that it chokes out weeds on its own.

I had that happen. One year I had some health problems and couldn't keep the garlic patch weeded. When harvest time came, the weeds were so thick and my stamina so limited, that I just wrote the patch off as a lost cause.

About 3 years later, I decided that section would work well as an apple/berry patch. The weeds around the perimeter were tall enough that I had assumed the entire area would need reclaimed. To my astonishment, the weeds around the perimeter were the only weeds that survived. The rest of the area was covered in a thick carpet of garlic plants! The bulbs themselves were so small they looked like scallions, but the plants didn't seem to care. I dug up part of a clump to use as green garlic, but left the rest alone. Later that year they formed so many scapes that I was able to use scapes in place of normal garlic all year long!

Last fall I decided to do this deliberately. I planted garlic under some berry bushes and fruit trees I had just planted, with no intention of digging the garlic up. I'm hoping it fills in the space and supplies lots of garlic scapes, while otherwise tending itself. I call it "feral garlic".

So, if harvesting is going to be too much of a burden and you just want the garlic to survive, feel free to leave it alone. Chances are, it'll do just fine.

Probably a couple of years.  Planted garlic here because it was supposed to help keep certain bugs out of the roses.  It grew for several years while being ignored before dying out.  When it disappeared it just suddenly didn't grow at all one year.  Guessing something ate it.

Thanks for the responses. Unfortunately right now I do not even have access to have a friend check on them for progress or scapes. Unfortunately I also probably don't have the luxary of just leaving them (without losing them), as I may not have access to the garden going forward.

The general consensus seems to be that later would be better than earlier, but I risk problems if I don't get them in time, but still want to harvest.

Thanks for all the input.

My experiences align with Ellendra's; posted above. The lot next door has been vacant since the house was torn down. There's a huge patch of "feral" garlic and I discussed it with a neighbor who's related to the last occupant who told me that the garlic came from a relative's garden and was German Red. So I dug some up; huge clumps of garlic. Many bulbs and rounds in a massive clump. I picked out some of the biggest bulbs which were no more than an inch and planted them in the fall. The next year I got some really large bulbs and a lot of normal sized garlic bulbs which to me looks exactly like German Red.

A couple years later I also had some heart problems and couldn't harvest the garlic. At planting time I dug some up after they had sprouted and planted out what we might call garlic starts. This spring they greened up and I fully expect a normal crop of garlic bulbs. I also agree with the observation that the huge field of "feral garlic" for the most part is weed free. The deer browse thru it and eat up some of the weeds and that does a pretty good job weeding what few other plants are there.

Seems to me you don't have to fence your garlic and I'm guessing that would also apply to onions and maybe any alliums. The wild garlic greens up to where the plants are at least a foot tall in the fall. Last winter the day before a big snow storm there were a lot of deer eating the greens but this spring the garlic regrew.

Garlic can't be picked too early or too late, and since the bulbs are all underground, how can we really know when our garlic is ripe and ready?
In this post i guide you step by step how to successfully harvest your own garlic!
How to Harvest Garlic