When they are ready the stems go yellowish brown and flop over. I dunno what our harvest will be like this year, I was quite late, but some of the stems seemed well developed, which is usually a good sign. I planted Spanish supermarket garlic! LOL It is purplish but dunno the variety exactly. Bugger using planting stuff, about 4 euros for a couple of bulbs? I bought a bag with huge bulbs from Lidl, cost about 90p :P