I thought bawang WAS garlic... I remember them being small and sifting through the pile looking for bigger cloves to cook.. I don't know if they get any bigger. Not sure the difference between a silverskin and an artichoke. I'm still trying to figure that out with my softnecks. You have a picture of the leaves and how they grow? The growth habit may be a clue to the experts on what type of softneck it is.

Here are a couple of good reference pages with cross sections of the bulbs showing the different clove configuration and leaf structure of silverskins vs artichokes

http://www.garlicseedfoundation.info/i/garlic-silverskin.jpg

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:363127}}

This post was edited by zqnmegan on Wed, May 21, 14 at 14:16

Duplicated post

This post was edited by zqnmegan on Wed, May 21, 14 at 14:14

Forgot to mention, nice garlic btw. I've never seen that type of garlic freshly pulled from the ground... So look at how the leaves grow and compare to the info from the links to determine what type of softneck those are. I'd like to know too.

Thanks for the links zqnmegan. It helped a lot... Now I know for sure that I'm growing both types. One of the links didn't work but I got the updated one.

http://www.garlicseedfoundation.info/i/garlic-artichoke-softnecks.jpg

may72, do you actually PULL garlic from the ground or dig? would love to pull, since i could then interplant and harvest garlic without killing the companion plant. thanks.

You don't pull actually. I dig but I hear people get away with loosening the dirt around it and then carefully pulling. I don't know the name of the tool but it's a long metal bar, sometimes angled, with a handle with a tip that looks kind of like a forked toung of a snake.

Sounds like my trusty weeding tool, the forked end is great for digging up thistles with their long tap roots and can pull them with without having to touch them - so long as I catch the root between the groove.
I have just planted my garlic and used the tool as a dibber - bought it at a village show in the UK well over 25 years ago and have had the handle replaced once.

"...Tiny bulbs. A clove of elephant garlic is twice the size of this BAWANG garlic bulb."

Guess you could say you didn't get much BAWANG for the buck. ;-)

Joking aside... I have a lot of Filipino friends, and would love to trade for a few cloves. My own garlic, though, won't be ready until at least the end of July. With our late Spring, it has only now begun to grow.

Mav72, you are correct , bawang means garlic :) Maybe for lack of a proper name?
Well here's a picture that includes the stalk and leaves. The bulb diameter is slightly bigger than a quarter.

zqnmegan, that's the tool... There are different designs but that's what it is..

iBarok, That's a nice looking plant... Maybe you can name it after the region it's from or call it pinoy. :) I'm thinking it's a silverskin... It resembles the silverskins I'm growing... My starter bulbs were a little bigger about the diameter size of a 50 cent piece but still small.. My artichokes have lighter green leaves and the growth habit looks more bushier. They kind of have a grassy corn look.

There are still a lot of green leaves, with only the lower leaf turning brown... it is possible that the garlic is not yet fully mature, which would explain the small size.

You might have got a bit more size, had you left it in the ground longer, but you already have the bulbs cloved out; so there wouldn't have been much more. Some times it takes some generations for a moved garlic to get back bulb size.

Is that a Creole, maybe? If so the clove wrappers inside the bulb will be rich red or purple, as one of the signs. Some of those Creoles grown in Mexico are said to have come by way of the Spanish from the Philippines quite some time back.

So y'all have an idea how tiny the bulb is. As you can see, bulb has cloved already.

A closer shot. With dirt removed.

This post was edited by iBarok on Sat, May 24, 14 at 13:11

Love to see photos of new garlic cultivars like this...well, new to me of course.

Those do seem to be some tiny cloves. It'll be interesting to see if they stay that size or get larger in successive generations that you plant.

Yes, I would say that garlic was taken a bit early. Can only see one or two dried leaves.

I do, indeed, pull my garlic, but I grow in raised beds in potting soil. It gets trickier the longer the garlic is in ground, of course.

iBarok, how big were the cloves that you planted? My fall planted garlic are almost ready to be pulled too...

That is the same size as the feral was that I collected in NW Iowa last summer. Really tiny bulbs with really, really tiny cloves, but both cloves and bulbils produced plants this spring from a fall planting.

Looks to me like you have a creole rather than an artichoke or a silverskin. They are not known for large bulbs in the first place and first time in your climate under your conditions is not necessarily going to give much size either. I sorta doubt that you really pulled them all that much too soon. They should cure out pretty well, with so much clove development and be ready to go back in next fall. They are much too southerly adapted to do much here in Minneapolis, probably not really hardy enough for fall planting here.