Garlic blooms.....seeds?

[Jared77]

So I got this heritage garlic from a local nursery. Came over from the old country, the gardener's father or grandfather grew it.

So it wasn't doing really hot I've got a handful of bulbs.

Anyway it was blooming and has a dry pod like at the end of the blossom. It has some slight misshapen clove looking things in it.

Are those new cloves/seeds to plant along with the current cloves that produced a stalk and thus blossom?

I've never grown garlic it was supposed to help keep deer away but I'd like to grow some to consume and some as a deterrent. The gardener I got it from said all the other immigrant families would buy/trade for cloves to cook with.

Anyway are those new cloves I can plant? We love garlic here but it's never been a priority to plant it. Sorry to be so long winded...

 

[PhilaGardener]

The smallish clove looking things likely are small bulbils; most garlic varieties don't set seed (which forms in green capsules). They are essentially clones of the mother plant and there can be a hundred or more in the mature scape. If you plant them, typically the first year they make a single bulb (called a round) and then in the second year a more typical head of garlic (containing multiple cloves). A great way to propagate the plant if you are not in a hurry and want a lot to go with that venison

 

[Pulsegleaner]

The smallish clove looking things likely are small bulbils; most garlic varieties don't set seed (which forms in green capsules). They are essentially clones of the mother plant and there can be a hundred or more in the mature scape. If you plant them, typically the first year they make a single bulb (called a round) and then in the second year a more typical head of garlic (containing multiple cloves). A great way to propagate the plant if you are not in a hurry and want a lot to go with that venison

If you are lucky with your garlic and conditions. Sometimes however it can take a couple of years between when the round forms and when it "breaks" into a actual head. I've got some that have gone for a decade and still haven't divided (but then, my property sucks at garlic)

Also if you are in the habit of planting your garlic in the fall, you may want to wait for spring if you're doing bulbils. Very small bulbils sometimes don't have enough stored food to make it through a winter (or how I lost all of my Cloverhead).

 

[Smart Red]

NOW YOU TELL ME! @Pulsegleaner, why couldn't you have mentioned that factoid last August? I replanted my bulbils in the fall and didn't have more than 3 survive the winter. The garlic cloves, however, did great this year.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Offhand I'd say because I WASN'T ON THIS SITE last August. I only joined last April.

And think how felt when I found out. My stuff grows so slowly that even my ROUNDS are within bulbil size most of the time . That's part of why I have such crappy luck, only the largest 5% or so of what comes out each year is big enough to make it through a fall/winter, which it needs for the time; a spring and summer here isn't enough to let it gain back it's weight (part of the reason it takes so long to make heads here is that most years the rounds I get at year end are actually SMALLER than the ones that went in; they can't make enough food over the good season to equal what they used up growing). Bulbils for me are near hopeless. The only bulbil grown garlic I think I have is whatever in my mix is rocambole, and that's only because rocamboles have HUGE bulbils by garlic standards. At least, I think there is still some rocambole in my mix, it would explain why so much of the stuff is such a deep purple (some of those little rounds come out of the ground more or less the same color as a red onion).

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

well, there are bulbils which are a clone of the garlic you are growing and those are usually easy to spot on the top of the scapes. and then there are true seeds that come from the flowers on those scapes!

i let my garlic mature and leave the scapes on them for the bulbils to grow some more. if i remove the bulbils from the top of the scapes before the scape straightens out but leave the tiny flowers intact those should start to produce crossed seeds with other garlic. some garlic varieties are easy to cross while others tend to be a challenge. when i was going through my Rosewood bulbils i noticed there were a few flowers that had swollen and they produced true seeds this year!

i'm eventually going to sell packets i put together of the bulbils but i'm trying to sort through the 19 types to be sure they are categorized correctly.

 

[Smart Red]

Apology accepted, @Pulsegleaner.



I wasn't criticizing you for not sharing that tidbit, or for not being part of this site before I killed off my garlic bulbils. I was just lamenting my ignorance out loud.



And I hope you will accept my apology if I came on too strong. With your help, I won't make the same mistake again. Thank you.

 

[NwMtGardener]

Oh, what a timely discussion! I just cleaned my garlic a few days ago, and got TONS of bulbils this year. I saved them, and was wondering when to plant them. Spring it is!! Thanks.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

@Smart Red , you're forgiven. It's nothing really, kappa no he. Thank YOU for not turning around and mocking my pathetic skill at growing the stuff. We all have much to learn. As they say, saru mo ki kara ochiru , ("even monkey's can fall out of trees")

Oh and this probably goes without saying, but if you ARE lucky enough to get some TGS (True Garlic Seed) either from your own plants or from someone else, treat it like you do the bulbils. in fact, it's usually a good idea to start it in pots initially and bring it in the first few winters to coddle it. For a year or two all you'll have is garlic "hair" (very, very tiny plantlets) and they will have functionally NO food stored up. I'm doing something like that over this upcoming fall winter with my "Wide World of Alliums" mix (basically a cocktail of edible wild onion and garlic species from all corners of the world. Mostly native Californian or Caucasian (as in "from the Caucuses") but there's one in the mix from the mountains of South Africa.)

 

[Smart Red]

My first year with the bulbuls, I planted them in pots and kept them in the sunroom (lowest temp is 40º (F) during the coldest winters). Then I planted them outside in the garden for the spring. . . all good so far. . . and I transplanted them to another spot in the garden over the winter. Would have been so easy to repot them and bring them inside. Drats!

Good luck with your cocktail experiment this winter!