Chau_ya, those are called "korms." You can save them and replant them. But there are a couple of caveats; not the least of them being that it's at least a two year process before they produce full-sized heads.

Normally the korms have very hard shell-like wrappers, and it takes special handling to get them to germinate.

Hello Gardenlady,

Thanks for the info of 'korms'. You've helped add to my vocabulary one more word. :)

OK, so at least 2 years to get to normal size.. Please go ahead and show me what is the special thing I need to do for them to germinate.

Have a good one.
Chau_ya

Gardenlady?

chau_ya, I have grown korms before. First time I tried them I planted them in the fall with the rest of the garlic. I did not see them come up in spring, so I figured they were done. Well, come along July and garlic harvest time, aren't there little sprouts where I planted the korms. I left them in, and by the end of the summer I had what was about the size of a large green onion.

The next time I waited until EARLY spring and soaked the korm over night, then nicked the skin with a knife, before planting. It took a few weeks, but it came up, and by garlic harvest it was a reasonably sized plant. The 'bulb' was almost the size of a ping pong ball. Actually it is called a round, or rounder. It is essentially one large clove.

This round, can be used like garlic, or replanted, and it will grow into a bulb, with cloves.

Can korms be nicked and planted in the fall?

Hi all,

GardenLad, Sorry I mispelled your name. My appology.
Nelz, Thanks for the Korm how-to info. It helps a great deal. The technique of nicking the skin: is it from the top to the bottom of the korms? Could you specify it?

Thanks. So I'll not throw the korms away.
Regards,
Chau_ya.

Chau-ya, you can call me anything but late for dinner.

Knicking the korms isn't a precise science. The idea is to create an entryway for moisture, is all. You can use a knife or similar tool, or even some sandpaper. You're not removing the whole thing, just creating a small gate. Once germination starts, the swelling "seed" will split the rest of the covering away.

Nelz: No reason at all not to knick & soak korms for fall planting. But it won't speed up the total process. That is, you're still looking at two seasons to produce finished heads. Sounds to me like you've got a working system, though. And, like mama always said, if it ain't broke......

I pulled an Elephant,got a round that has 4 corm/bulbils so now that we are on the subject of replanting the corms.
Can I now after just 1 week out of the ground(July 16 today)soak&nick these corms and replant now?Won't they start to come up sometime in Sept and start root growth that will go on overwinter(with the 98 or so % slowdown of the roots)and go on into next year and give me larger rounds to plantback in fall 2006?
Bill

Thank you all for the info on korms. I'll save all of those and plant them in this coming Fall. Maybe planting them closer than I do with normal cloves.

Best regards,
Chau_ya.

Before we get too carried away with those "korms", I don't think that it's wise to make up a new word without consulting with someone more schooled in botany. We've already discovered that there's only one main source erroneously calling them "corms". In the botanical world, they do not meet the criteria to be called a corm. However, they do come within the description of "bulblets". That's what I found under a dozen elephant garlic plants today!

Martin

Martin,
Dead on!

I sat down with a fingernail clipper and carefully nicked my corms/bulblets, then soaked and planted in the fall. No growth till very early spring, but got a good harvest of rounds. I planted them about 1" apart. I had to harvest after loosening the soil with a fork as they were too weak to pull up without breaking the stem. I got alarge quantity of new corms fom these as well, perhaps as much or more than from the full sized ordinary elephant garlic heads.

Now, which are the best propagules, rounds or elephant garlic cloves?

>We've already discovered that there's only one main source erroneously calling them "corms".Martin, I must have missed that discussion. Is it still on the boards, do you know? If not, could you recapitulate it? Thanks.

Garden Lad, it may have been in the Vegetable Forum but it was just in the past few weeks. There was a claim that "corm" was the accepted terminology for the elephant garlic "thingies". Only a single Internet site mentioned it and that was a commercial company selling garlic, The Garlic Store. Search for "korm", in relation to garlic, will also find a single source, one Ken Nelson! However, those elephant garlic "thingies" meet the botanical requirements to be called a "bulblet". They do not fall within the description of "corm". I suppose that one can call them whatever one wishes to until called to task by some sticky professor!

Martin

I say for myself-edible I will continue to think/refer to as bulblet.Corm/korm I will think of as an unedible type allium.....or other flowering plant
Corm/bulblet I will try to use in any posts just for the sake of everyone,whomever is correct,even the high and mighty educated scholars of plants & botany.
Bill--corms I picture as wrinkle/striated rounds with flat bottoms.

Thanks, Martin.

Bill, rather than cluttering up your posts, let's just pick one. The consensus seems to be that bulblet is correct, so let's just use that for consistency sake if nothing else.

Personally, I'm kind of partial to "thingie." :>)

ok by me.I'll try to remember.(Bulbils :~) .
Bill

Bulblet?

Bill, definition of bulblet: "Immature small bulb formed at the base of a mature bulb." Certainly sounds like what we find when we harvest elephant garlic!

Martin

A followup to this is that I've discovered that elephant garlic and leeks don't have exclusive rights to growing bulblets. I've found one on a Music bulb and another on a Chesnok Red. Same color and hard covering but slightly more pointed. Both are definitely not a malformed clove. Just one more example of how closely related everything is among some of the allium family.

Martin

I thought my elephant garlic was ready to harvest, though early. Dug it up and there were tons and tons of bulbets (my go to description, as it is a cuter word than Korm).

Seems like most of my elephants are just rounds :(

I'm asking about how to store the bulbets until planting? In a bowl? In the dark?

Do I let my elephant rounds dry out as much as I would bulbs? Or are they tastier fresher?

Many thanks

msjaime

The challenge with elephant garlic korms is that there is no guarantee they will sprout and grow the first year. So then you miss them and they sprout and grow the next year. Since I rotate my garlic around to different locations in my garden, this is not something I want. So what I started doing is planting the korms in one gallon pots buried to the rim in the garden. When some sprout, I lift the small plants out and relocate them to a place where I want garlic growing. I'll seed these pots fairly densely, since I know that not all of them will sprout readily, but randomly throughout the year I get new sprouts from the pots, even when they have been planted two or three years. I don't wait for October to plant these, I just plant them right away after harvest in June. To avoid damaging sprouting korms, I lift the whole pot out of the garden, gently slide the potting medium and sprouts out into a large pan, separate out everything that has good sprouts for formal planting, add a little new potting mix to the bottom of the pot, then return the mix with unsprouted korms back into the pot to return to the garden.

As for the rounds, just think of it as one large single clove of garlic. Store them just as you would any garlic. For me, every single round will get planted in October (Zone 7), because that will be my very best heads for the next harvest. If you actually planted good size cloves last fall and all you got were rounds, I think you should be considering what you need to be doing to improve the soil, incorporating organic stuff, adding fertilizer of some sort more regularly, and making sure they don't spend too much time completely dried out (moisture is important). I've had times when planting in a new yard or garden where my garlic just didn't make like it should, and it was always changed when I got the growing conditions right.

Great information about bulbils or korms, I always wait till my garlic is scaping, sending up flower buds to cut them, then leave the plant till its near dry to harvest