IMO, garlic likes a lot of sun. (I may be totally wrong, here) But I grow mine like a perennial in my permanently mulched garden. I just take up what I need for the winter, and leave the rest of it in the garden to over winter. It grows into huge clumps, some 8" diameter. I don't mess with scapes either. If I feel like it, I break them off, but if not... they just stay. All of those scapes put out heads of bulbils which fall to the ground and make yet an other crop of garlic. Since those clumps are so big, I don't worry about the size of the individual cloves, though they are a nice size to work with. Mine is a black skinned stiff neck. Chickens go nuts eating all of the bulbils when I'm trying to get them into the soil in the orchard to sprout! My puppy is also fond of garlic. I had a bowl of it sitting on the floor (one of those 8" clumps) and she always was running around with a clove in her mouth.