"Have you pulled your garlic yet? You should," asked my colleague Sara Cooke Friday. She had given me bulbs from her husband's garden to plant last fall, and periodically checked in to see how they were doing..

"I pulled one up the other night, but it was small, so I put it back in," I said.

"Pull it now. My husband's got his all out," she said. "They're tiny this year. We think it's because the winter was so warm and they sprouted."

Indeed, they had sprouted shortly after planting in October, and grew and stayed green well past Christmas. The sprouts were about 5 inches high when the freeze finally went deep in late January. The very tips yellowed. Then growth resumed in spring and all looked wonderful as they grew.

So it was disappointing to pull up such small bulbs. Had Sara not assured me this was widespread, I would of course have thought it was my fault, bad gardening.

(Now I'm sure I'll hear from readers with gargantuan bulbs, and it will turn out to be my fault.)

Yesterday, the family spontaneously gathered on our porch around dinnertime. We were chatting with daughter and grandson when my brother arrived with tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant and green beans. He has full sun in his yard, and a neighbor plants and shares there -- all he has to do is water. Another neighbor wants to use his sun, too -- soon he'll be hosting the shady city neighborhood's community garden.

Inspired by this bounty, and by steaks ready to grill, together we gang-tackled the harvest of tiny garlic, incidentally pulling weeds that looked like garlic but weren't. (Today I'll fill the space with extra pepper plants currently doing not much in pots.)

We have probably waited a bit too long. Some of the garlic sheathes have shedded. A few broke off on the way out of the soil, and it is those you see in the blue colander above.

This hardneck Rocambole garlic is delicious -- strong, with a creamy texture, easily sliced very thin. I understand why it's considered gourmet garlic, superior in flavor to the softneck garlic in stores, which is more widely grown commercially because it keeps well, which this doesn't. But these petite things are a far cry from the big beautiful bulbs I began with.

"Next year," Sara promised. "Just save some heads and plant the cloves in the fall and next year they'll come bigger, if the weather's normal."

We'll give some away, of course. Then I'll dry what's left for a few days, braid them, and, come October, plant cloves again. Some I'll put up for later.

A page titled Preparing and storing garlic at The Garlic Store warns, "NEVER allow garlic in oil to sit at room temperature. It is a hotbed for botulism. Keep it refrigerated or frozen at all times."

At the bottom of that page, suggestions,

Using a food processor, I simply pulse until the garlic pieces are the size I want, making sure that I don't place too much garlic in the processor at a time in order to avoid too great variation in the size of the pieces or the garlic turning to mush. Some then wrap the chopped garlic in small packets of plastic and freeze them. You can also add oil to the garlic mixture, 1 part garlic to 2 parts oil, and freeze it in a container or - as I prefer - in ice cube trays. That makes it easy to pop out the garlic you need....

I prefer storing peeled garlic cloves in oil and keeping them in the freezer, as freezing raw, unprotected garlic greatly changes its flavor and texture. If you prefer to keep your garlic in the refrigerator, submerge the garlic cloves in wine instead of oil. Dr. George York, University of California at Davis has provided this method for acidifying garlic in order to make it safe: Cover peeled garlic cloves with vinegar and soak the cloves for 12 to 24 hours. Drain off the vinegar. It may be reused as garlic-flavored vinegar. Cover the garlic cloves with oil. Refrigerate the garlic/oil and use within 3 months.

Would I hope for a harsher winter so we'd have bigger garlic? Of course not.