It is a long process to grow regular garlic from bulbils. Need patience.

When the rounds are 1/2" or larger, they will likely bulb up and won't grow into rounds again. People try to force the small rounds to grow into larger rounds by planting densely. It may or may not work.

I do not really care. Each year, I throw everything into the ground. The tiny cloves and rounds and bulbils will continue grow into rounds. Mid-size rounds will bulb, produce small cloves and I plant them again. Large rounds will produce near-normal size bulbs.

I do this year over year to build up the stocks.

Below is my bulbils collection. I can't ID the variety until they grow taller and bigger.

Bulbils from Music or other Porcelains take quite some years to grow on. You might want to try a wider spacing on your rounds, especially the larger ones. I suggest treating them like a clove of the same size. Music doesn't seem to do real well when crowded. I have a rocambole that produces large bulbils that produce scapes and divided bulbs the first year. The bulbs are small so I replant the largest cloves from the best of them. The tighter I plant them the smaller the resulting bulb. They size up somewhat more every year especially when given wider spacing.

Most of my hardnecks and probably yours will not equal Inchelium for size. If you get 2 1/2 inch bulbs in general you will be doing very well, much better than my results will be this year. Even at that size the Music cloves will definitely be huge. I spaced my Music out on an 8" grid last fall, and Siberian, too, both of which seem to have done very well with that much room despite being planted way too late. Not even close to harvest yet, not either of them.

Brown leaf tips are not uncommon. If they proceed up from the bottom and end up browning out the whole leaf, that is a signal of impending harvest. Else you may have a bit of wind or heat damage, or a signal that watering was not quite enough at some point. I don't see it to be a enough of an issue in your garlic beds to worry about at this point in the season. Your varieties are going to start looking rattier as they get ready to be harvested.

I just notice the OP is in 5B zone. It seems still early to harvest Music now. OldDutch can advise better.

From the photos, the plants are under some stress. likely more water than less water. They do not have much life left now. I'd dig them without further delay. Or you are at risk to lose them in the ground. You can try to dig some up to see if the roots are still strong. I prefer to be on the safe side, then on the late side.

My garden has had a LOT of rain this year (2" or more most weeks since April, a couple of weeks with 4") with no rain the first two weeks of June (and I watered them a couple of times with the soaker hoses I have in the beds then). The unusually warm February and cold March didn't help in terms of the brown tips. My soil is high organic matter due to using large quantities of "horse manure" which is mostly the bedding, and I dig raised beds each year. So it is very well drained.

I pulled all of my Inchelium (softneck variety) and have started pulling some others. in the last day there has been another 2.2" of rain, which seems like exactly the wrong time for rain.

I don't want to sound picky, but I really don't like small divided bulbs. I grow several times the amount of garlic I need for myself, so I probably won't use the small bulbs, and I doubt if the customers of the food pantry I give produce to even know what to do with good garlic bulbs.

I have of course been expanding my inventory of Music because the large cloves are so easy to use. It is good to know that they might do better with greater spacing, and I had not thought of using different spacing for different varieties. I have grown small rounds into big rounds with other varieties by growing them with close spacing, but it didn't work with Music this year. I have plenty of decent sized bulbs though to save all the good cloves that I need for next year.

I am thinking about cleaning the small garlic heads while they are green and, without taking the papers off of each clove, grinding them up in the Cuisinart. This might make a paste like material to sheet freeze in a thin layer and them maybe I could use it in stir fries that way. Does this sound to you like it would work? I am one of those people who cannot seem to get a garlic press to work.

Thank you for your ideas and thoughts.

I do not really want to spend time with tiny bulbils or cloves (not bulbs). Anything smaller than 1/3", I leave it to next spring. You get more rounds if you plant in the spring, or/and plant them more densely.

At this time of the year, you can harvest early. You might be sacrificing some size by not waiting but with careful curing, garlic works surprisingly well with a bit of an early harvest. Better a bit too early than too late.

My Music here in zone 4 is not anywhere close to ready yet. Siberian either, but other varieties were ready to dig earlier than normal, and did way poorer than expected, as well. It has been wetter than normal here too for much of the spring so far, but my problem is resulting from planting far too late last fall. IIRC when one plants bulbils in the fall is one of the factors in how they perform the next year, too. I forget where I read that though. IMO it sure hurt my yield this year to have planted the cloves so late last fall for about 4 out of my 6 varieties.

I set everything (I had no bulbils or rounds last fall) on the 8" grid last fall, and I will do that again, but plant earlier, more like early to mid October. I didnot mulch, but depending on my energy levels :-) I may mulch this fall. I also fertilize heavily with coir, composted manure, and Milorganite, plus some lime when I set up the beds at least two or three weeks before planting the cloves. My basic soil is sandy, though, so drainage is not a problem. Just the opposite, I try to amend to help hold moisture and nutrients against leaching.

Drainage is one of the big questions - whether too much or too little. I would suggest researching varieties for those that are tolerant of more moisture. I am pretty satisfied with the varieties I have; so it has been a while since I did much variety research, but I seem to remember that some are touted as being more tolerant of wet conditions than others.

I have been growing most of my garlic from bulbils since I first started in 2009 and have noticed that in my growing conditions, turbans with continue to grow ever larger rounds for anything up to 3 or more seasons. with average weights in excess of 40gr and 5mm diameter. Exactly the same stock grown by another gardener at a similar latitude but lower elevation will obtain fully cloved bulbs in the first season from bulbils - no apparent rhyme nor reason. I have also found that very small bulbs that I don't bother to break up and replant as bulbs will revert to individual rounds the following season, if you lift volunteer plants that emerge at the beginning of the season and split to replant, you will notice this. Will try to take a photo the next time that I come across one. Snakeroot farm conducted an experiment planting the entire umbel without separating the bulbils and also adjusting the planting times to measure the optimum production of rounds. Last winter was a very poor season with lots of SH growers badly affected with rust and fungal diseases. Fortunately, I have plenty of bulbils to build my stock back up.

There are several factors of getting rounds instead of bulbs. Varieties, timing, spacing and growing condition.

Varieties: some like Porcelain, since the cloves are so large, it always tends to produce large round first, then to grow into small bulbs.

Timing: spring grown plants tend to have a short growing season and will likely produce rounds than bulbs.

Spacing: crowded or not separating the entire seed bulbs will encourage rounds than bulbs.

Growing conditions: harsh growing conditions encourage rounds, like poor soil and lack of water. But if the bad growing condition happens after the plants already start bulbing, then they will produce tiny bulbs. This is something we should try to avoid.