Some softneck varieties---particularly if they've been stressed---do develop a secondary bulb above ground, that contains bulbils.

This will only get a little bigger, but it won't move up. The scapes are a separate growth altogether.

Rain can affect bulbing because bulbing is a function of daylight. Continued rains (or overcast days) can lead to undersized bulbs if it happens at the wrong time. But it shouldn't affect the maturation period.

Maybe you just have a later-maturing variety. Just monitor the color change in the leaves. Or lift one of them now, and see what you have.

I did lift one about a week ago and saw that it only had one almost golf ball sized clove, I planted it back in the ground. I will continue to watch the leaves but with all the rain and overcast days we have had I wouldn't be surprised if that is the problem

Would you recommend taking out the bulbil growths to concentrate more activity into the main bulb development??

Every good question deserves an answer. And the answer to this one is, I dunno.

I don't think there has been any work done studying whether or not their presence affects head development. My concern, though, would be damaging the plant if you took them out. So I'd just leave them be.

Or, if you have enough to experiment with, remove half of them and leave the others alone, then compare final results.

You wrote: "I did lift one about a week ago and saw that it only had one almost golf ball sized clove"

Those are called rounds. They're a result of an environmental glitch during the growing season, perhaps short of water and/or nitrogen.

Rounds won't subdivide into a bulb with numerous individual cloves this season. But they are good planting stock to use for your next garlic crop. Plant at the appropriate time for your region.

Please pardon me for bumping this old thread--but the same bulbils-growing-in-stalk thing happened to me, and I wanted to see if sbcnymph had any new information to post! Here are some pictures that I took:

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Just like scbnymph, I started with grocery store garlic. The bulbs were pure white. It grew beautifully, I harvested it and then planted some of it as seed. Three years later, that pure white softneck garlic is nowhere to be found--the descendants all have pink-striped bulbs, like this one.

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Some of it has even evolved/devolved into hardneck garlic!
Please excuse the dark pic, I took it very early in the morning:

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A month later, those scapes now have two heads full of heavy little bulbils.

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I seem to have three kinds of garlic, now--softneck with no bulbils, softneck with bulbils growing inside the stalk, and hardneck. None of it looks at all like that plain white grocery-store garlic that I planted three years ago. Bizarre. Anyway, hope people find this info useful.