The resulting bulbs will most likely be quite small as the plants will have to compete for nutrients, water, rootspace, and sunlight. I would harvest the entire clump before they begin bulbing. They will look like green onions at that point. They will still be flavorful and the stalks can be used in place of garlic cloves. Slicing and dehydrating is a good way to preserve them.

I would say the yield is larger per square foot when heads of garlic are left to grow and the stalks are harvested in the manner I described. Per plant the yield is smaller but the amount of plants you can fit into a space is substantially increased, plus you can use the entire aboveground portion of the stalk including the leaves.

Rodney

Hi Peter, good to see you posting!

I've had lots of double cloves and a couple triples thru the years. I do believe each plant did put out a separate scape but they were on the small size. The resultant bulbs combined were about the same size as the bulb from a single clove plant each with a flat side where they grew next to each other.

These were all from fall planted cloves. I don't recall ever leaving an entire bulb in from the previous season. It really should never happen since I try to rotate beds from year to year for my alliums.

Hi Jack, thanks and hope you are doing well.

I had only hoped for scapes... I am sure the bulbs will be small. But I will update with the harvest! These plants are large and vigorous and I am expecting decent scapes from all of them. I will be sure to fertilize well, starting this weekend.

The garlic is going nuts! No weeding required, the plants certaintly look capable of each producing a bulb. Unlikely they have the root space though... looking forward to scapes and seeing the final results, assuming they don't rot which has been an issue for me in the past.

I am seriously considering just leaving it as a green garlic bed. Let it take over and see what happens.

If you allow some scapes to remain uncut and develop bulbils, the garlic will go "walking" very much like tree onions do.

Wondering when to cut all these beauties.. or to pull them

Peter - they are full on curl so pull them now. The sooner the better as they can get woody pretty quick if left too long.

Yep I will pull them tomorrow morning. I guess I should pull not cut.

Pull them for full sized gallions but cut the scapes just above the top leaf, if you want to keep a bed. These hardnecks do get woody real quick and it is probably too late already for the stems, but not for the scapes. During scape season, I eat as many raw in the garden as I bring in for meals. Very interesting snack... Things are not yet that far along in my garden.

They are still thriving the next year. A fuss free scape bed!