Those big single cloves ("rounds") if planted, should produce a normal-sized bulb next year... provided conditions are better.

Glad to hear that you found a viable alternative to storing garlic in your climate. I tried an experiment over the winter, sealing several small bulbs (grown from bulbils) in a zippered freezer bag, stored in my unheated basement. While there was some deterioration, several of the bulbs still had viable cloves. Keep in mind, winters are very long here... in a milder climate, results would probably be even better.

Many garlic growers (self included) have had a string of bad years, starting with the "aster yellows" outbreak that infected the Upper Midwest in 2012. That completely destroyed my collection, and wiped out WeGrowGarlic as well. After rebuilding my collection, wet Springs here have plagued my garlic since then. I'm trying to keep a positive attitude, but after losing more than 20 varieties, my patience - and my resolve to continue growing garlic - are being stretched to the limit.

Hard to believe that I once considered garlic to be a trouble-free crop. I'm reluctant to throw in the towel, though... not only because I'm stubborn, but because I don't want to resort to supermarket garlic grown in China.

Well, that is good to know, Zeedman. Is this just one variety that can make the "rounds", or is it common to many? It kind of blew my mind (small explosion) when I found the first one as I had never heard of this happening before.

We lived in Northern Indiana, not far from Gary, when our kids were in grade school. Oh, the SNOW!! Every winter brought a case of "cabin fever" to this ol' Kansas-Oklahoma girl. But summers were long enough to have a nice garden, it rained often enough and never got above 100 degrees. That part was really nice.

I'm sorry to hear about the "aster yellows" disease, and yes I noticed WeGrowGarlic took their website down about then and wondered why. I discovered their site on a search to find out more about the garlic I'd been sent, and then found out that's where the guy that sent them to me had bought his first ones. Last year and the year before, I tried to separate the crop into recognizable varieties again and store them labeled as such. I went by whether they were hard neck or soft, and then by the color of the papers, size of the bulbs and number of cloves, but several of them seemed very much alike so I do not know if I got it completely right, or if they had crossed with each other, as there were some that I had to resort to planting the little corms that develop from the flower, or the little hard "knots" that form on the sides of the garlic bulb and fall off when the bulb has been pulled out of the ground. Like you, I don't want to resort to what I can find at the grocery store. It seems like most of what can be found at grocery stores is drenched by chemicals, either by the grower, or by the seller, and someone told me that the perfect bulb sold in the little box is actually not even a true garlic.

Every year I have some kind of crop failure, usually due to weather conditions here. But danger also lurks in the form of insects and invading warm-blooded critters.

Quite a few garlic varieties can form rounds, especially artichoke (soft neck) types. This happens most frequently in response to poor growing conditions. Those same conditions can also cause soft neck varieties (which normally do not form bulbils) to develop bulbils within the stem.

"... but several of them seemed very much alike so I do not know if I got it
completely right, or if they had crossed with each other..."

Garlic will not cross, since it is grown from clones (the cloves of the parent) rather than from true seed. Different varieties can be very hard to separate, if mixed together... but you can separate them by their type. Looking at your list of varieties, Inchelium & Red Toch are artichoke; Asian Tempest is Asiatic; Chesnok Red is purple stripe; Martin's is rocambole; and both German & Music are porcelain. So you should at least be able to separate the varieties I bolded, since you have only one variety in each of those types. You can find descriptions of each type, and how to identify them, at this site:
Filaree Farm garlic

"... or the little hard "knots" that form on the sides of the garlic bulb
and fall off when the bulb has been pulled out of the ground."

"...someone told me that the perfect bulb sold in the little box is actually not even a true garlic."

Both of those seem to describe Elephant Garlic; which, although it resembles a very large garlic, it is actually a bulb-forming leek. Elephant garlic will form small, very hard bulbils just beneath the main bulb. Those bulbils - and the flower stalk, if it forms - are unique to Elephant Garlic.

This is a link to another great garlic site. Jeff Nekola at one point grew the entire SSE garlic collection, and took photos & descriptions of all of them. With only a few exceptions, most garlic varieties currently sold are listed there... a good place to browse if looking for new varieties:
Heirloom Garlic Archive

Oh, thank you so much Zeedman! I am not growing Elephant garlic, at least not knowingly. The little hard knots form on the sides of the garlic bulb between two layers of skin. If planted, they grow into a small garlic bulb, and I was thinking that when these are planted they are the ones that grow "rounds". I could be wrong on that score. They remind me of a chocolate chip, in size and shape, and they have their own tight little papery "skin". Under that skin, they are very hard and make a sound when they are dropped on the counter top, similar to the sound of a wooden button.

I'm glad to get that link you sent. I'll go there. I have two varieties that have purple markings on the wrapper. One is stripes and one is "mottled". Sometimes I have a bulb that has both stripes and mottles on the wrappers of the cloves. And some make big, huge cloves, others make little ones that are fiddley to peel. Could just be the difference in how good the growing conditions are in whatever spot they're grown. But those differences in appearances are where my confusion comes in.

Thanks much for your advice.

PS: I found one from this year's harvest that still had the thing intact:

and here's what it looked like after I pushed it loose with my thumb:Ever seen anything like this before?

Odd. That small bulbil sure looks like the ones formed by elephant garlic, and your description of its hardness (the wooden button sound) matches as well. If it was, though, that would have to be the smallest elephant garlic bulb I've ever seen. ;-) I grow a diminutive relative of elephant garlic (Pearlzweibel), which (as its name implies) forms a cluster of pearl-sized bulbils around the base... the main bulb of those is about the size of the mother bulb in your hand.

Some are bigger than this. This one happens to be one of those "rounds", and is from this year's very poor harvest. Usually the bulb has formed itself into cloves, there are probably 6 to 8 cloves, I don't remember for sure, will keep better records next time it happens, but seems like the "host" of these bulbils is always a garlic with white paper. Sometimes there are several bulbils around the sides of the bulb if the bulb is larger. That is interesting about the Elephant garlic. I used to buy it at the store, many years ago, and plant the cloves. No way it could be a carry-over from then, it's been too many years and we've moved twice since then. There was not an established garden when we moved here, in fact nothing much growing on the land at all, except for a couple of mulberry trees and a couple of hackberry that the birds had apparently planted because they were in the fenceline. When we built the garden we discovered why. Rocks. Tons and tons of limestone rocks, layered one upon the other. I will keep all that you have said in mind. Do you plant the bulbils? I have been doing that and I have been thinking that those rounds are what grow from the bulbils. Something always seems to happen to my markers so by the time they're ready to harvest I've lost track of what I planted where. I've been unable to spend as much time in the garden as I should have due to knee replacement and a shoulder surgery, and then a fall that complicated both with a bone bruise and soft tissue damage. But, "God Willin' And The Creek Don't Rise", I have a better system planned for next time.

Are the "rounds" mild garlic flavor or normally strong garlic. If mild, you may well have some elephants, the bulb and the offset look very much like what I get for elephants here in Minneapolis. My elephants grow more robust tops than other garlics, much heavier foliage and stems, but the bulbs have not sized up real well for me nor have they divided much. I suspect that they are borderline hardy here in Minnesota. It is my impression that by the time you get down your way south, there are a number of local varieties of elephant garlic; quite possible some feral ones.

For me Music is by far the largest of the true garlics I grow; so that is one possible aid in sorting. Also if you plant in groups from a single mother bulb, you can let one scape go to bulbils and that will also help you sort, since the bulbil expressions vary between types, and the scape appearances do also. Your Asiatic should also go down more on the order of onions and be ready to dig earlier than most of the rest. My Japanese (another Asiatic) is sprawling all over the bed, and the Mexican got dug this evening, pretty small true bulbs but barely an inch and a quarter. I think the Mexican is a Creole, It had a different growing pattern than the rest of my hardnecks, and they tend to mope this far north, which it certainly did.

Yes, I have noticed some of the scapes seem to also be a bit unique from one variety to the other and also it seems like some varieties might grow taller than others.

I really haven't been paying much attention to whether the rounds are more mild than garlic cloves. I will try to see if I can tell.

When the larger white--papered cloves have been in cold storage for a few months, it seems like the paper that covers one of the flat sides of the clove turns yellow. Is that a clue for Music as well?

I can't answer the question about cold storage, I do not refrigerate any of my garlics or onions. I occasionally see some light purple striping on the inside cloves of Music, but mostly Music has a white shell and only 4 or 5 cloves at the most. German porcelain is very similar.

Asiatics have a very unique scape with a real long beak.

One other thing: I do not trust markers by themselves. I make a paper map with notes about not only which variety is planted where but also when. And then I separate my varieties with tulips. I find that in the fall I have to lay chicken wire over newly planted beds to keep the squirrels and stray cats from digging up my new planting. I lost most of my multipliers to that last fall, when the chicken wire didn't reach quite far enough.

zeedman - am I imaging it or are there a number of naturalized and/or feral leeks across the South? I expect if so the range from your Pearlzweibels to full sized elephant garlic has quite a few local intermediaries. What is shown sure looks like a leek bulb and the offset definitely does.

OldDutch, yes, I have seen quite a few bulbing leeks being mentioned on garden forums over the years - sometimes in a "what is this" post. As I recall, most were in Southern locations. They seem to be best suited to a warmer climate than ours. SSE was even taken in by a few heirloom "garlics" that turned out to be elephant garlic.

Hmmm... never considered that Pearlzweibel might cross with other leeks, didn't think they could. Looking into it, though, it appears they indeed are the same species. Mine bloom most years & are prolific seed producers, so intermediate crosses with other leeks might be possible. That would sure explain the bulb in the photo.

BTW, I had the same experience you described with elephant garlic; poor winter survival, and a large percentage of rounds from the survivors. For the most part, I harvested just about the same amount every year as what I planted... so never really had enough to eat any. After several seasons of that, I gave way all of my stock.

Your pearls and the elephants both have actual flowers, and with the ease that most alliums hybridize and how readily most of them naturalize, I wouldn't be at all surprised that there are quite a variety of different feral leeks around the southern half of the country, many of them neither pure pearl nor pure elephant. In fact, I expect that there are a number of strains of pure elephant garlic on its own. Nor would I be at all surprised if there were some of the bigger decorative genetics in the mix as well. There are certainly a whole lot of local types of multiplier onions still out there, even if there are fewer now than used to be, and there are reports from all over of collecting feral pure garlics, which I have done myself from NW Iowa of all dumb places, where there is barely 150 years of settled history.

I intend to find a spot to "patch" my elephants and more or less leave them in place, and do the same for my walking onions, too. I picked up some scallions in the grocery store that sat in the frig for a few days, after which I noticed that the roots were growing; so I planted em. They all took off and have gotten huge. Some of the stems are thicker than my thumb and the tops are well over knee high. This winter we find out if they are hardy. I have no idea of course what variety or species they are, but I do not see any bulbs developing yet. If they winter (and multiply) they will also get a patch of their own.

The two photos rockwhisperer(6a) showed above are from the elephant garlic. I just harvested two of those today.

I just harvested my last garlic crop today. It is another decent year that I built up my crop. I harvested about 400 good heads, 400 smaller heads and about 400 rounds. I'm going to work on my soil next year.

"I intend to find a spot to "patch" my elephants and more or less leave them in place..."

You know, that might actually work. Left on their own, many of the bulbils of the survivors might grow along with the mother bulb(s). That could, over time, lead to a better increase. Sounds worth trying. I have been "patching" my pearlzweibel for a couple years now, there are so many juveniles that they look like a patch of grass. ;-)

The same can be said for several of the perennial onions that I obtained from SSE, they have formed clumps large enough that I will need to divide them this year. Two of those have formed dense clusters of small bulbs (in spite of the crowding), so they may have potential for usable bulbs if more widely spaced. Those two have already fallen over, so I'll be digging part of them up shortly. If you might be interested in trying either of them, OldDutch, send me a PM.

Nice crop as always, Redsun. I wish garlic was as foolproof here. :-( What I have left will be very late, due to our cool Spring & April blizzard. Mine only put up scapes this week, so probably won't be ready until late July or so.

Well, now I just wonder how I ended up having elephant garlic since I never planted any, unless some of these named varieties can revert, or something. I've never known exactly when to harvest. I gather, Zeedman, that I need to wait till scapes die? Usually I shoot for about middle June and it has worked out in the past. I think I might've tried, in past years, waiting till later and had trouble finding them.

Great looking crop, Redsun. OldDutch, do you think my "garlic" is feral leeks, then?

" I've never known exactly when to harvest. I gather, Zeedman, that I
need to wait till scapes die? Usually I shoot for about middle June and
it has worked out in the past. I think I might've tried, in past
years, waiting till later and had trouble finding them."

Different garlic types will display different characteristics when they have reached optimal harvest size. Yes, if you wait until all leaves have died, the artichoke (soft neck) varieties can be hard to find... been there, done that, it was kind of like a treasure hunt. ;-) For the hard neck types, the scape is irrelevant as a harvest indicator, since it should be cut off early to encourage better bulb growth. (Letting the scape develop can help to identify the garlic type, though.)

The problem with waiting too long is that as each leaf dies, a layer of the bulb wrapper dies & begins to decay. Wait too long, and you may dig up not a bulb, but a cluster of exposed cloves... especially for some of the hard neck types. If the garlic will be eaten or processed shortly, this is no big deal; but if the garlic will be stored, this vastly reduces storage life.

In the link above to the Heirloom Garlic Archive, under FAQ's, there are some good harvest guidelines. These are some excerpts:

"...The first garlic variety to size up are Turbans, which will have
full-sized bulbs while only 1/3 -1/4 of leaves have turned brown. In
Albuquerque, these tend to be ready to harvest during the last week of
May and the first week of June. Asiatic, Glazed Purple Stripe, Middle
Eastern, Porcelain and Purple Stripe varieties are harvested next, when
green begins to fade in the leaves, and approximately 1/3 of them are
brown. For us, these are harvested generally during the third and fourth
weeks in June. There is considerable genetic variation within the
Purple Stripes, however, and their harvest is spread out over the entire
month of June. During the last week of June and the first week of July
the Artichoke and Rocambole varieties are harvested. Artichokes are
ready to be dug when their green begins to fade and approximately 50% of
leaves are brown; Rocamboles are ready when the leaves turn from dark
to light green and no more than 1/3 of them are brown. During the second
week of July the Marbled Purple Stripes and Creole varieties are
harvested. Marbled Purple Stripes will have 2/3 of leaf material brown
when ready to dig, while Creoles wait until the very end to allocate
energy to their bulbs, with more than 3/4 of leaves needing to be brown
before they are ready. Be careful, though, as some Marbled Purple
Stripes (Allison's, Brown Rose, Brown Tempest) need to be harvested up
to two weeks earlier, during the last days of June, and with the Creoles
which have a harvest window of only a few days before bulb wrapper loss
becomes too great."

There are more comments there, worth reading in their entirety. In wet years, these recommendations might not work, since leaf growth may not die back. I had one such year before I lost my collection. If you see new leaves emerging between the existing leaves, it means the cloves have begun dividing, and should be dug immediately. This is especially true of artichoke types, which have smaller cloves to begin with... the bulb may end up really huge, but contain dozens of very small (almost unusable) cloves.

Do you ever get the feeling that growing garlic is a full education in itself? I'm glad to get all these wonderful opinions and advice, as I find I've been doing some things wrong, and surprisingly, some things right! (My daddy used to say even a blind pig finds an apple every now and then -- LOL) He was a kind man, would never say that about someone else, but said that about himself often, followed by that sly little smile he had. I say it about myself and smile, too, but the smile is a remembrance for Dad, bless his little pea-pickin' heart... I know I won't remember all this by next garlic growing season, so I'm saving it in a document I've set up, including some things from those websites you sent me to. Thank you -- and everyone -- so very much.

I hooked on with garlic because I can't grow anything else. I have severe small animal problem, rabbit and groundhogs. They chew on my deer fence and I do not get the cash to enclose a 100' by 100' area. I also do not get the time to tend to my garden any more.

Growing garlic is still a learning process. I'm still experimenting with many things and continue to improve. The good thing is that we are not running a business, the most we can lose is to wait another year. Just never give it up.

I am having a rabbit problem right now, myself. We have a 6' chain link around our garden and so far it has kept the deer out. We found the rabbits could squeeze thru the links so we put chicken wire, cut into 2' strips, all around the bottom of the fence. That keeps the bigger rabbits out but the babies still get thru. They are real tough to chase out thru the gate, I baited my trap with an apple slice and caught Flopsy, but then the next day I saw Mopsy. Prolly Peter Cottontail is around, too, truth be known. They cause a lot of damage with new seedlings and it's getting real frustrating. Last spring I had something that dug in under the fence, I never found out what that was, and had some digging happening wherever I buried my kitchen scraps.

I'm thinking seriously about scaling down. I don't plan to spend any more money on the garden as my whole point in having a garden was to stretch the food budget and spend less than what it costs to buy at the farmer's market. I don't think I'm accomplishing that goal and it's getting worse with time instead of better. I have a lot of seed in my seed stash as I like to grow open-pollinated things, so it will take a few years to get scaled down far enough to where I actually have the ability to tend to things properly. The brussels sprouts and kale have made seed this year and also some "Sweet As Candy" open-pollinated onions. I didn't get much seed from the kale plants as some insect (or the bunnies) ate most of the seed pods!! Sheesh. I have really enjoyed that variety of kale.

But you're right about the never giving up part. Persistence is really the cornerstone of life. We haven't lost the battle till we've totally given up. I imagine eventually my garden will be full of things that have not been wiped out by critters, bugs and weather conditions, just by natural selection.

If you're not a vegetarian, start eating rabbit. There seems to be a strange law of some kind that says what you start to value tends to make itself scarce.

Also a couple of neutered tomcats in your garden may do a little digging in fresh dirt, but are very good controls for baby bunnies. Also neutered toms do not stray and tend not to spray. They are also usually very territorial and often outgrow unneutered toms.

Free roaming cats are generally very good rabbit controls, since few baby bunnies get past them. So long as there were aging widows in our neighborhood that fed all the stray cats, we had no rabbit problems whatsoever. As they died off and the stray cats declined in numbers, cottontails have begun to show up again.

Ewwww. I've heard if you eat them any season but winter, they're full of worms. And I'd still have to get them to come to the trap, which I seem to not be very good at. I caught one with a piece of apple dangling over the rocker and the trap sprayed with cider vinegar and the trap placed in a secluded area where I've seen the rabbit. But so far it hasn't worked on the second one, who hopped quite close to me this morning, stopped and looked me over pretty good before it went on its way. I thought about trying to grab it, then thought better of it, as I'm challenged at being quick like that, and then it might be harder to get the little vermin to go in the trap. I'd love to keep a cat, had one and then our neighborhood had a serious rat infestation after ranchers around us burned off their pastures, and people put D-Con out. My cat and a dog from each of two neighbors got poisoned too. *Sigh*. We have coyotes out here, too. So it's a hostile environment for cats unless you keep them inside all the time and that kinda defeats the purpose. Got any ideas for better trap bait for a rabbit? I'm going to Lowe's today (we have a wasp nest somewhere, apparently full of reddish wasps, who unexpectedly have swarmed me twice in two different locations of the garden while I was weeding). When I was at Lowe's last, looking at ant traps, which I've stopped needing as suddenly as the invasion started -- go figure -- I saw a little bottle of "attractant" on the shelf. I'll have to look at that today and see what it is it's supposed to attract. It's not even Japanese beetle time yet, or grasshopper season! Yikes.

I've always wanted to eat rabbit someday.

If the DCON season is over, you might try to step up to a border collie. Few coyotes will cross one once it is grown and most rabbits will avoid where there is such a one. I grew up with landrace border collies and love the type, but where I am at in the City they are just a bit large and I am old enough to avoid getting a puppy who might outlive me. That is one of the cruelest fates possible for a devoted pet. Back on the farm our single one kept the raccoons out of the sweet corn, which is an accomplishment, even if he took an ear once in a while himself.

Other repellents that sometimes work include human urine. Instead of using the stool and flushing save it and dribble it around the borders of your garden. You will have to "freshen" it once in a while. So just go with the flow so to speak. Old time gardeners used that one quite a lot. Back in the days of the chamber pot, before indoor plumbing took over in the country, it was a whole lot more obvious of a solution, and easier to manage.

Those rabbits who have no fear of a human close by could very easily fall prey to a BB gun.

The problem is that our local ranchers burn off their pastures routinely, so it's a "gift that keeps on giving". One time, they lost control of their "controlled burn", and burned quite a few acres that did not belong to that particular rancher, including some of our back and/or front yards and my neighbor across the road lost his rick of firewood that he bought and had delivered for the coming winter. After that, I trapped, drowned, and buried 178 rats, just off our place.

And no, I won't risk dying off on a dog, either, I think it's so inhumane to leave them behind with no explanation. We had a fella that was a mixed breed, some collie, I think, and maybe some beagle. He was a sweet boy but we had a lot of problems keeping him cared for while I was in the hospital in Tulsa. My husband drove back and forth just so he could make sure the dog was fed and inside for the night. The dog had cancer and had to be put down, right after I lost my D-Conned cat. That was a sad year all the way around.

Unfortunately by the time I get my husband and he brings out something to shoot with, the bunny has gone who knows where. Wurra, wurra. I have some carrot shavings I saved, soaking them in vinegar now, will try that in a bit.

I'm going to try that urine, though. I'm not close enough to my neighbors for them to detect any odor that might cause. If they see me do it they will make no note of it, they are used to seeing me do weird things over here. Heh.

And yes, I'll do the "collecting" in the privacy of my home. LOL

Hey Rockwhisperer, saw your harvest and i am pretty sure you'll need to work harder this time.

After going through the comments and your post, I thought maybe suggest you some keypoints that you can keep in mind while planting Garlic.

• Garlic can be planted in the spring as soon as the ground can be worked, but fall planting is recommended for most gardeners. Garlic roots develop in the fall and winter, and by early spring they can support the rapid leaf growth that is necessary to form large bulbs.
• Ensure soil is well-drained with plenty of organic matter. Select a sunny spot. A sandy, clay loam is best. In heavier soil, plant it in raised beds that are two to three feet wide and at least 10 to 12 inches tall.
• In areas that get a hard frost, plant garlic as early as 6 to 8 weeks before the first expected fall frost date, before the ground freezes. The timing may vary with local climate; the aim is to give a long enough period before the ground freezes for the plant to develop good roots, but not enough time to for it to form top growth before freezing temperatures set in. In northern climates, planting is usually between September and November. In southern areas, February or March is a better time to plant.
• Lime the soil if you haven’t done so recently. Before planting cloves, work a couple tablespoons of 5-10-10 complete fertilizer, bone meal or fish meal into the soil several inches below where the base of the garlic will rest. Select healthy large clovers, free of disease. The larger the clove, the bigger the bulb you will get the following summer.
• Break apart cloves from bulb a few days before planting, but keep the papery husk on each individual clove.
• Do not plant cloves from the grocery store. They may be unsuited varieties for your area, and most are treated to make their shelf life longer, making them harder to grow. Instead, get cloves from a mail order seed company or a local nursery.
• Place cloves 2 to 4 inches apart and 2 inches deep, in their upright position (the wide root side facing down and pointed end facing up). Plant in rows spaced 10 to 14 inches apart. A single 10-foot row should yield about five pounds of the fragrant bulbs.
• In the spring, as warmer temperatures come, shoots will emerge through the ground.

Here is the link to a Video--> https://youtu.be/4BqLuil1ICw

And here is a link to a website where you can watch more videos on how you can have a good harvest of garlics--> https://artisanslist.com/watch/

That is a lot to absorb and thank you so much for the time you spent trying to help me. I'm copying it into my reference document so I can quickly find it in the future. The garlic I planted in June has come up very sparsely. I have yet to dig into the ground to find out for sure but I'm pretty sure there won't be anything there now.