Just like you know that garlic is very temperate. It typically needs the seasonal temperature to grow and bulb.

I do not know this garlic much, but Shantung is a province like Maryland in US. I think it is too hot to grow this in Texas and Arizona. It is also hard to grow garlic in the hot South. There are not many varieties that do well in hot climate.

The "Spanish Roja" has been tested to grow well in some of the Southern states. It originally comes from the hot Spanish. You may want to give it a try.

It does look like it didn't get enough cooling. Or that you may have harvested it too soon. Look at all those leaves! And all still nice and green. You might also try one of the Creoles. They are well suited in many parts of Mexico; so they may work very well for you. Garlic growers in other parts of the South refrigerate their seed stock to get enough cooling and then put it out early in the year instead of late fall. I believe a couple of folks who have participated in the 'Garlic Growing 2017' thread here in ALLIUMS do that. IIRC one of them is actually in Florida. You may want to page through that and see how they did.

Yes, makes sense. I just do not know how garlic grows in the deep South. In general, Garlic is a cold weather crop. The planting will be different in the south. Good luck next year.

I garden in Georgia just below Atlanta. Probably not as hot as texas. But I grow these three varieties of garlic - Chets Italian, Inchelium Red, Red Toch. Plant around the end of Oct or beginning of Nov depending on the weather. I harvest around the end of May to the first week of June depending on the weather. Here is a harvest of Garlic - Red Toch in the first picture.

yolos, this is very nice. Both the Chet's Italian Red and Inchelium red are Artichoke softneck varieties. They can take on the hot heat in the South. Not much info on the Red Touch. There has to be some other name for it.

Garlic varieties are very region specific. Softneck does better in mild climate. I've not had much success with softneck here. Music does not do well in mild climate, but excellent in Zone 5-6.

From what I read, folks recommend Creoles, Asiatic and Marbled Purple Stripe varieties in the warm climate regions. The chilling helps the cloves to break the dormancy, but does not help the plants to bulb up.

Red Sun - here is a site that lists Red Toch. An Artichoke softneck variety also.

http://www.southernexposure.com/red-toch-softneck-garlic-8-oz-p-547.html

I am pretty certain that you did not get enough cool weather to vernalize your seed. You need 6-8 weeks up where you are to trigger clove formation. Clove formation is triggered in the spring as the ground warms up. Judging from the number of green leaves, you probably could have left them in the ground a while longer. The bulbs (called rounds) would have gotten bigger, but would not have formed any cloves. You can cure the rounds and replant this fall. Not sure if last winter for you was normal, but I would put the seed in a small paper bag, staple it closed and put it in the fridge for 8 weeks before planting. I just put my seed in for chill today. I will plant the end of October. I am much farther south and much warmer in the winter than you will be. I need 10-12 weeks of chill to overcome the fall heat. I grow Brown Saxon, Metichi, German White, Texas Rose, Blanak, and occasionally some Creoles. I harvest in April since I do not get a dormancy. This is the first year that I will be planting my own seed. The long veralization has made it impossible to plant until December when using commercial seed. I am hoping that The extra 2 months will increase my head size.

inulover, I hope the extra veralization helps.

As an experiment, once I planted some left-over grocery store bulbs that already sprouted. They were unknown type, probably hardneck. I planted them in spring, probably April. By late summer, probably late August, the plants died down and I found some small rounds in the soil. They were not chilled or treated.

This is something I plan to do the next spring to grow small bulbils or cloves to rounds. They won't get lost over the winter or be able to grow into small bulbs.

Thanks for all the input. Indeed growing garlic in a mild winter location is very challenging. Most tips about growing garlic up north DOES NOT apply here in the south. ;)

Example: when the 3-5 bottom leaves turn brown, then it's almost ready to harvest your garlic? Toss that one out the window if you live in the south. :)

Regarding this post, this garlic is 'supposed' to be a 'Turban' variety. Garlic 101 tells us Turbans are supposed to grow well in mild winter. I used to grow this shantung garlic at zone 8- Arkansas. I plant them around first week of October and come first week of May, I'll be harvesting them. We moved to Texas zone 9, planted them around the same time and was hoping to harvest them around the same time. So when I harvested them June 17, ( which is six weeks late) I was baffled that there's not even a 'round'. Just leaves. Like leeks.

So don't take our word for it. Get ahold of the Texas Dept of Agriculture and find out how to grow garlic down south. Or get out into a local farmers' market and talk to the growers themselves.
In Houston you need to grow garlic like they do in Florida, which is an artificial winter of some 3 months or so at near freezing in the refrigerator and then plant out after New Years. Up here in Minnesota I plant in October. I would not expect that to work in Houston. My opinion is that the vernalization (chilling) does help eventual bulbing which is the process that would normally follow blossom (as it does in tulips, which need the chill to flower). I have planted in the spring without the chilling (I store at room temp; so in the spring those cloves did not get chilled) and got nothing but gar-leeks myself (very much like your picture but with a lot fewer leaves), in fact those plants stayed green and erect throughout our next Minnesota winter, barely qualifying as dormant, and then they bulbed up the next season. They were hardnecks and broke dormancy without a chill, but did not bulb up until after a very intense one.

You are correct that you need to culture your garlics different from what is successful this far north. But it is still garlic and there are conditions you will need to meet.

Garlic forms "rounds" when they receive insufficient sun, and/or too little water, and/or too little fertilizer.

As was suggested, check with local folks. You cna contact your County's Extension Service office with the info from the iinteractive page - http://npic.orst.edu/pest/countyext.htm