I had a similar experience this year with one of my softnecks! I grew Lorz Italian from SSE.Two of them produced scapes and another made a sort of secondary bulb on the neck just above the real bulb! The rest acted like sane, ordinary softnecks. What's up with these mutants?

I've had that happen, too, but only with one of my bulbs, I forget which one. It wasn't above the soil, but an inch or so above the regular bulb was another smaller bulb with 3-4 small, perfectly usable cloves on it.

I thought softnecks didn't produce scapes. Most of my hardnecks didn't produce scapes this year.

the "bulby things" are proof that your garlic is a soft neck not a hard neck. soft necks do that and have no scape. hard necks do not have that bulge of bulbs and do have a scape. if you ordered hard neck varieties then you were incorrectly sent some soft neck variety by mistake. another good reason to buy locally not from seed companies who charde an arm and a leg for their garlic.

if you buy your garlic locally you can see the hard neck stem and you'll know that it is hard neck. check farmers markets during late july and all of august.

tom