Single clove garlic topsets for interesting veg...

[chriscross1966]

I had an experiment this year growing some single-clove garlic bulbs to see what would happen.... what happened was a rather ropy looking normal garlic bulb but the flowerhead wasn't a flower... it was full of little bulbils. I'm assuming these get planted to become single-clove garlic. I've planted a load but I've got about 50 left. Will bundle them up in tens I guess and am looking for interesting temperate veg to grow... I'm a freak for alliums and shelling beans (would love some Canadian Wonder for instance) though pretty much anything that's not a brassica and is a bit strange would be good.... Would also be interested in some Japanese overwintering onion seeds if anyone has some from this year spare.....

chrisc

[chriscross1966]

Still got a few left if anyone's interested, plus some basal offsets of elephant garlic and Catawissa tree onion topsets.

[realfood]

I also planted some Chinese single clove bulbs last autumn, but they did not produce any "flowering" stems, just some rather "weedy" leaves. I thought that they had died during the hard winter as the leaves rotted off, before showing some life in the Spring, so I assume that they come from warmer climes.
The fact that you got bulbils means that they are a form of hardneck garlic.

[chriscross1966]

Yeah I think so too... THe bulbs they produced weren't great, the cloves were a bit on the small side but were pretty strong too. I'm guessing that sowing the bulbils gets the single-clove bulbs the next year..... The bulbils were bigger than the ones on my hardneck and there were no flowers in the head at all (unlike my hardneck which was about 50:50) .... I'm a sucker for alliums of all sorts (three different strains of tree onion anyone?) so I'll perservere. Apart from anything else it should be possible to select for a strain that deos well in my conditions and S/C garlic is handy ion the kitchen....

chrisc.