Don't worry about those temp.s, besides a possible burnt leaf tip here or there, your garlic won't even notice it. If you aren't mulched, you're also going to have a good bit of radiant heat coming back up from your soil. I'm just west of you and we're gonna share the same weather pattern this week. It's not uncommon in some regions to see garlic sticking out of a few inches of a late season snow. About the only thing we have to fear of the cold at this stage of the growth would be a hard freeze as the seed cloves might not have enough "energy" left to generate the new leaf growth needed to survive.

Thanks for the timely reply!Now all I have to worry about and work with are all my grape vines.

Only thing I know about grapes is: I can't keep the deer out of mine no matter how much chicken wire I surround them with.....good luck.

Well....three batches of penny sized hail moved thru last nite, but the garlic weathered it like it never happened. Look out, Bluestreak, it's coming your way !!!

Ok....everybody do their Google homework?

Garden Symphylan, aka -Scutigerellaim Maclata, aka -Garden Centipede.
These little buggers can ruin your garlic crop. Last year the cosmic forces that be, provided them with the optimum conditions to teach me all about them in a most unfavorable way.
It was a perfect garlic growing season. Rain at all the right times, test pull's were showing some of the nicest bulbs I'd ever grown. Bulbils were popped and dry down was progressing right on my projected schedual.
Jump forward to harvest day. What I thought was a very uniform dry down suddenly became a garlic killing bug infestation. Little centepedes, 1/4" - 3/8" long, white or brown in color. They bore up thru the basal plate, like an arrow thru the heart. What I had taken as dry down was actually garlic dying.
I immediately went into research mode; internet searches, making phone calls to the extension services, fellow growers, and the net work of mentors that have held my hand thru previous trials and tribulations. Alot of thoughts on the problem, but none had experianced these vicious little critters devistating a crop like they had mine. Finally thru many phone calls passing me on to someone else, I got ahold of a guy out in Washington state. He knew what they were, and why I was hit so hard. I had both white and brown ones, and even he with his knowledge of them had never seen a white one. There's not much internet info on them either that I could find, even after I knew what I was dealing with. And so now I'll pass the knowledge on to ya'll.
These little bastards love organic amended soils. They are migrater's of opportunity. That is to say that they don't burrow thru the dirt, but travel via cracks in the soil. My dry spell I was so happy to have before harvest had created a perfect interstate system for them. Straight to my garlics. Then it was just a matter of them chewing up thru the basal plates.
Options to fight back with....?
Well, it was after the fact for me, there was nothing to be done except harvest all the garlic and save what I could for market. And of course the damn things seemed to have picked the largest bulbs to feast on first. Had I known about them sooner, there still wouldn't have been much I could have done. I had them because my soil content attracted them like an open buffet, and I hadn't had enough rain to control their migration and keep the adult population drown down to a manageable number. There is NO organic pesticides to be used. Any chemical option would have to be so deadly and undiscriminating that EVERY micro-organism would have been wiped out also. I was told that in a nutshell I had two options; solorize my field under plastic and "cook" them, or flood the field and drown them.
And neither of those two options were a guarentee, solorizing tended to not get those that were deep, and if I could hold plastic sheeting down on this hilltop in the wind I constantly have 24/7....well, I'd have a big hoop house if I could. And how the heck was I suppose to flood a hilltop, for an extended period of time, let alone a field that had other veggies growing in it at the same time...?
Or rotate out of my field and let it lay fallow for a couple years. Yeah, right.....like there's that kind of profit margin that I could afford renting other ground in corn country with the ethanol push on.
Oh woe is me, all is lost....!!!!

I'm sure I was well on my way to loosing my mind over it when one of my grizzly old farming neighbors stopped by with a beer to share under my shade tree as I burned my unmarketable garlics. "All is not lost." he say's, "Mother Nature tends to correct imbalances like this on her own if you give her the chance to." And he was right, all I needed was the heavy rains I've had this spring after an early warm-up brought the over-wintering buggers out of their slumber.....they're drowning nicely out there as we speak.

So what can you folks gleen from all this...?
Make sure you have adequate moisture under your mulch to minimize their migration and to suppress the adult population. That's about it. If your leaves are dying back, check your roots. If it looks like something has been chewing your roots off at the basal plate.... something probably has.

Time to pour another cup of coffee and head for the grn.house.

Thanks for the warning the hail came thru this morning but had lost alot of strength by the time it got to Joliet it was still pretty strong when it went thru Ottawa though.Hope your not experiencing the high winds we're getting now thru tomorrow night.Thanks for sharing your growing experiences with us too.

Blue, did you mulch your garlic beds? They should be okay if they have a nice blanket of mulch. If the leaves get a little frost bitten, I bet they will come back once it warms up again.

MHG, I married an Iowa Farm boy, but he loved the city life. Kinda Green Acres in reverse! That Iowa dirt is magic, I will never forget the wonderful way things would grow up there.
It took me a few years to stop pouting and start digging in this hard Texas clay.

Hey moorehaven...that is terrible, I hope your losses were not too bad, the trials and tribulations of a farmer! I stress out with a small back yard garden, I can't imagine the stress when it's your livelyhood too!

I googled it, just wondering if it was the same little things I see sometimes in my soil. The ones I see are light brown or red, small, but look longer than this and they move fast when you unearth them, in a fast squirmy side to side motion. Any idea what I mean? Anyway. here is a picture of the garden centipede for any who are interested:

http://www.entomology.wisc.edu/diaglab/06images/0707Symphylan.jpg

http://mint.ippc.orst.edu/images/symphylan.JPG

Hey, check out this site:

www.whatsthatbug.com

I have seen it before and just came across it again now looking at centipedes. It's a great site...Lots of bug info and great pictures sent in from all over the country. I think the site was started as an art project.

Bluestreak, yep, got the cold NW wind and now this morning I've got snow too!!! This front is a little more severe than my cute weather lady led me to believe.
Walked the field this morning, the garlics look cold and unhappy, but I'm sure no real damage is being done yet that they can't recover from. Weather gal had said I was gonna have mostly clear skys during the day and temp.s back up in the mid-40's, and I was betting on the radiating soil heat at nite, but with this snowy overcast, that's gonna bleed off real quick.. Wish I could be omnipitant, twitch my nose, and move all 29,000 ( sorry, a little chest-puffin' there ) of them into the grn.house with the peppers and tomato seedlings.

Muddy, thanks for the bug site. I've sent them an email already this morning looking for a better picture. I remember the site from my research, but never contacted them. I just wish there was an organic weapon I could go on the offensive with against them. Garlic isn't their only target of choice. The plumper and softer the root system ( like onion and garlic ), the better they like them it seems.

Pearl, I feel your pain. And isn't that clay sooooo much fun to work until you get it into growing shape...? My hilltop was the same way, but I've finally gotten it from a greasy brown to a nice fluffy black. I envy you your growing season on a good year tho.

MHG,

You had to go and say that your garlic looked cold and unhappy, but you're sure no real damage has happened.

Well it's going to be cold and frost and all that happy crappy here, till Monday,

and I don't want what I have left in the garlic department croaking on me. So, I guess I'm going out and laying the plastic on top of the bird netting again.

I have peas, carrots, turnips, parsley, cilantro, brocoli and spinach UP out there.

I'm back inside. All is covered. I have a feeling we really won't see spring this year. Just winter and summer. Winter shouldn't have gotten here so late.

Course that was a good thing for you and those nasty bugs. Just what I wanted, something else to worry about! Woo Hoo!

I'm not so worried about my garlic cause it's pretty hardy stuff. I am worried about the fruit trees that are starting to bud and the perennials that have popped out of the ground and growing like crazy.
I'm glad MHG I've never seen those bugs around here and hope I never do. Oh I think storing the carrots in the ground makes them sweeter too. I guess grandma was right. I'll have to try planting the carrots like that.

Goldpearl no I didn't mulch my garlic.I had a cubic yard of chopped up leaves but all of that went to cover my 2 yr. old grape vines.I do love garlic but I only spent under 20 dollars for all the garlic I have growing now.Last year I spent 200 dollars on the grape vines.It didn't take too long to make the decision on what got covered.

Heck, I forgot about the perenial flowers that are up, don't have bulb flowers, but regular perenial flowers. Oh well, flowers are not my best thing anyway, and I can't cover everything up. I guess unless everything is borderline hardy, maybe things will be okay, OR NOT!

I only had one or 2 plants that are out a little early. Folks creeping flox is out everywhere around here. Usually it doesn't come out until mid May. My spring flowers (bulbs) have bloomed and are dying back already.

I think my garlic will hold out, the length of the daylight hours has something to do with plants survival too.

I spent some time pulling weeds out of the garlic beds tonight. I had them all nicely mulched until the wind decided to move the mulch elsewhere. Now, I'm pulling weeds and wondering if I should add more mulch now or remove the rest and let the soil warm up, then mulch it again before the full heat of summer arrives.
I realize I actually enjoy pulling weeds but I don't want things to get out of control.
I am also wondering if I should add more compost to the garlic beds. I sometimes use it for mulch and let it do double duty feeding the plants. Is garlic a heavy feeder?