Topic: Can anyone solve this mystery pls

[lottie lou]

Last year I purchased 2 bulbs if Caulk Wight from the Garlic Farm. The bulbs were what I consider 'normal'  size ie what you would purchase from shop for culinary purposes. There were approx 8 cloves per bulb. These were duly planted late October on raised bed topdressed with half a grow bag and chicken pellets. The bed had never held garlic before. Previous year had been onions and cauliflowers. After a winter of total neglect the resultant growth was harvested on 27 July. 15 bulbs were lifted but surprisingly these appeared in size and flavour to elephant garlic which I would have been delighted with had I actually liked the stuff. Does anyone have any idea how 15/16 tiny cloves could have not only become-so huge but changed species?  Garlic Farm did suggest I left the bulbs in for too long and diluted the flavour which I have refuted as that would not have chaned the specie from the parent plant. Any ideas/theories greatly received.

[JanG]

Could you spell out for us how you know they’re a different species? I take it that they have a milder flavour and are very large. Are there any other diagnostic features?

[galina]

Did the garlic wrappers have purple stripes?  Did it flower and have bulbils in the top?  They say that Caulk White can have quite large cloves, but the other features should show a clear difference.

Caulk is a hardneck, so should have flowered and produced bulbils.  Elephant garlic also flowers but does not produce bulbils in its flower head.  And elephant garlic wrappers do not have purple stripes, they are white.  Elephant garlic when dug up, usually has small bulblets in a hard brown wrapper hanging off the bulb,  hardneck garlic does not have this at all.  Did you see bulblets when you dug the cloves?  You could not have missed them, they are so obvious. 

If you go by clove size alone, then it is quite possible that you have relatively few cloves in a bulb of a hardneck variety, but that these are bigger than the average softneck garlic.  Softneck garlics do not flower, but make more, smaller cloves.  What are the other characteristics of the garlic?

I do not think that they have changed species, but that with good fertile soil, you got maximum size bulbs possible for this variety, whereas what they sent for seed bulbs was probably smaller.    https://www.thegarlicfarm.co.uk/products/caulk-wight%C2%AE-seed