Bulbils take several years to produce a multi-cloved bulb, and potentially more years to produce a fully cloved bulb with plumb cloves. That round may just produce a round next year, or a bulb with 2-3 cloves, and in another year it might give you a full bulb. But whatever happens, it will be the best tasting garlic you've ever tasted in the end. By planting bulbils you are taking your garlic back to its roots. Each time a clove from a bulb is planted, the true properties of that garlic are diluted. Bulbils get you back to the start. If you know the variety, the 2nd page in this Canadian Organic Grower's PDF will give you an idea of how many years it will take to get a full bulb.

It all depends on the garlic varieties. The round here is decent sized and it should produce a small or medium head next year.

But for some of the bulbils, it takes several years. And it is difficult to grow the tiny ones. My German White bulbil plants just somehow disappeared. They are just too tiny.

The good things for growing bulbils are, it is cheap and it does not bring diseases....

I planted 250 or so German Red bublils last fall (not sure if every single one came up or not). The bulbils were between 3/8 inch and 1/2 inch in diameter (which was average size). I did two different plantings 5 weeks apart and at three different spacings. Nearly every one of them grew a scape and I'm willing to bet money that every one that scaped has grown a mini bulb, not a round. Same thing happened a few years ago when I planted Carpathian bulbils, I had more mini bulbs than I did rounds. Garlic is interesting stuff and when you think you've got it figured out it throws you a curve.

Rodney

The single round (I believe it is German Red) I got is about 3/4" diameter. And most of the bulbil plants sent scapes. So I can't tell for certain that I'll get mostly mini cloves. 1/2" mini cloves are just too small to plant next season. I still prefer the round since at 3/4" size, the round can grow into medium sized heads.

The plants are still mostly green. My regular garlic planting has been disappointing since we had wet condition from the winter to spring. I'll make higher mound next season.

At least the bulbil plants look good now. Have something to cheer for.

If you got scapes, you almost certainly have cloved bulbs underneath. Rounds generally do not even try to bloom. The real trick is to get as big rounds as you can without them dividing into cloves. The bigger the actual rounds the better the next year's bulbs will be that you grow from them. If I knew the answer to how to do that consistently I expect I would have a much more comfortable retirement.

The rounds from bulbils are ready to harvest and send to the curing trays when the tops go down like happens with onions. You will find a much higher percentage if you dig them immediately when that happens and the tops are still somewhat green to point the way.

OldDutch, I'm with you regarding growing rounds and have found this article really helpful http://snakeroot.net/farm/GrowingRoundsFromBulbils.shtml

I have also been sowing entire umbels of bulbils for the last couple of years as recommended by Snakeroot farm. I've found that spring sowing of the resulting rounds are more likely to yield rounds again, probably due to the lack of vernalisation.

could your heirloom bulbs be an asiatic variety - small bulbs and large bulbils which would account for them not gaining much in size? what do you consider a tiny bulb?

More likely a rocambole or a purple stripe of some sort. Definitely not a porcelain. The scape is quite normal in appearance, not like what I have heard described for the Asiatic group. I have not completely ruled out that this might even been an entirely different species, perhaps sand leeks, but I also have a bed of those and these are different from them too. I have not eaten this one yet. If it has a solid bite it will probably not be the sand leek which is said to be quite mild. The original gardener was a German immigrant and more than a little bit of a herbalist nut for that she was family, etc. I expect that I have some kind of rocambole true garlic.

I just pulled my Japanese which are not huge but are cloved up nicely anyway. They also have bulbils, which are either embedded in the side of the stem or breaking out out it just a bit above ground level. I know the Asiatic are supposed to have weird scapes, but this is pretty strange, since no scape showed up at all on the top of the stem. These bulbils are also huge, bigger than those that show up on the feral. I also see bulges in the stem that have not broken through at all, which I expect to also be bulbils. For me Japanese is behaving more like a softneck than a hardneck. I have yet to see it send a true scape for me.

would love to see photos of your feral if you have have any during it's growth - ie leaf, scape, umbels and harvested bulbs... sounds intriguing

I will do that if I can get my beat up old, cheap digital camera to work. That will be in a new thread.

About 1 month after I post the original photo, I dug about 1/4 of my German Red bulbil plants. Here they are:

I do not know why the photo is shown this way. The biggest bundle at the top right hand side are the heads with cloves. The rest are rounds. So about 1/4 are cloves. I believe the ones in the ground have more cloves than round. So I figure for the total, about 1/3 are cloves and 2/3 are rounds.

All the plants that sent out scapes are cloves. Some of the cloved heads did not send out scapes.

I planted a total of 660 bulbils in this bed. Most of them make it fine. Some are lost to rot. The winter and spring have been very wet.

Very nice growth! How big of a bed did you grow those in and how deep? I've had some problems growing bulbils in the past and don't want to mess it up this fall.

The bed is 11' x 60', spaced 4"x6". The spacing could have more dense, but making the maintenance more difficult.

I think I planted about 1" deep, not quite sure.