We Have Garlic!!!!!

As with everything, it seems that growing garlic can be as difficult or as easy as you want to make it. I planted 2 types of garlic on the first of November, covered it with mulch, have ignored it ever since and voila!A friend had told me that when the plant starts to look like it is dying, the garlic is ready
and the stalks/leaves are starting to fall over, and not in the direction they would fall if it was from being knocked over by the sprinklers. We have two types, so I dug up garlic from both sides of the bed,and have forgotten which was which. The Susanville is a softneck with a "pretty purple tinge" to the skin, and the Polish White is a hardneck with purple stripes, so I think it's on the left.

When I tried looking directions up on gardening websites, I found out we'd been doing most things wrong of course, we haven't seen any "scapes" (long curly shoots from the plant), garlic doesn't like extreme heat, and we need to stop watering it two weeks before harvesting--but it didn't mention anything about not watering it if it was going to be over 90. The least helpful, but probably most accurate, directions said that learning when to harvest was a matter of practice and experience. That makes sense, but doesn't help much now. From the directions that came with the garlic, it said that when 40% of the plant is dead, it's ready, but it didn't say if you stop watering THEN or stop watering before that--which in this heat will kill the rest of the plant so I'm assuming they mean stop watering AFTER 40% of the plant is dead, but then we're back to that whole it's-really-freaking-hot problem.

Do you think gardening was easier before the internet?