"When early summer arrives, but later than the Fourth of July -for the Mid-Atlantic it will be time to harvest your garlic. When garlic is ready, there will typically be only six leaves left on the plant."
"Harvest in late spring or early summer when the plants have five or six green leaves, with no more than one or two beginning to turn brown. Each green leaf represents a wrapper layer surrounding the head."
The Trick of Knowing When to Harvest Garlic - "A garlic plant with 10 green leaves, for example, will have 10 layers of bulb wrappers. While thereÃÂs no standard number of leaves that garlic should have, a reliable harvest indicator is when half the leaves have died off, and half are still green. The leaves start to die off from the bottom up."