garlic: small cloves?

 A lot of our soft-neck garlic has reasonable-sized (for us, anyway)
heads, but the cloves seem smaller and more numerous than past years..
Our hard-neck, grown in the same bed, is normal, or maybe even better
than usual in this regard.  I could be just mis-remembering, but the
change seems pronounced.

Anyway, I'm wondering if there's a 'that means ...' for this.  We used
less manure than in the past, but tried to compensate with more 5-10-5.

Zone 5+, Syracuse NY
Planted 11/7; up 4/1; harvested 7/3, after they fell over.

Thanks,
George

 George wrote:


  we had two periods of dry weather this past
year that affected about everything grown.

  did you guys have a mid-spring drought?


  songbird

 wrote:


No.  Actually, it was kind of wet, IIRC.  BUT, I do mix some peat mossy
stuff into the garlic bed, and I'm probably not terribly consistent with
it, year-to-year.  So, drainage might have made it drier.  Would dry
cause small cloves & (reasonably) large heads?

G

 George wrote:

  sure, but other things could be going on.

  peat mossy might mean the soil is getting
acidic.  might want to test it for pH.

  did you plant the same sized cloves as
previous years, at the same depth?

  if you've not already planted for next year
you can do some variations and see what happens.


  songbird

 wrote:


Yeah.  As far as what was planted, we did the same as in the past -
selected the largest cloves from the prior year.  We wouldn't have
planted small ones.  Depth?  I can't say for sure.  I did use a
different technique, so it might have been deeper.  As far as the soil,
... well, the hard-neck are fine.  

I'm going to try a new bed, and go back to my old planting technique.

G