My garlic plants are doing what ornamental alliums usually do: Producing tons of seeds. I don't see much on the web about using these seeds. One site even says the plants rarely make seed. Has anyone tried this? I'm open to experimentation, but I'm wondering what the time frame is like from sowing to maturity, compared with the usual method of planting cloves.
To write you my recent experience of same case. We used last autumn those seed, and few days ago we pull it out. Also during spring we use it as young (for salad). Time of sowing the same as garlic which is planted from cloves. It was smaller than regular ones (from cloves), but now is also little smaller than regular. But all of them from seed are almost identical size - interesting. Also when we took it out it looks healthier than regular ( in a last 2 months we had a LOT of rain). But we will see how it will hold on during winter - in a storage. I didn't mention that it also made cloves. This autumn we will plant again some rows from cloves some from seed from regular garlic, and some seed from garlic which came from seed, also we will plant cloves from garlic from seed. So little experimenting makes it more interesting. Once long time ago (I was a kid) we planted it from seed but it didn't make cloves, just only one bulb- little smaller than normal garlic bulb, maybe that was garlic for spring planting. I didn't try it ever again, now as you drove this question, I'll try this too in spring.
Here is classic continental climate (hot summers, cold winters, rainy springs)-but it's not strictly as it was, i believe this is result of global warming.
Where is "here"?
My garlic does not produce seed, but does produce small bulbils on the top of the seed stalk. I assume that's what you're talking about. I only grow Russian Red and Porcelain, so there may be other varieties that produce seed or very small bulbils that look like seed.
I tried planting them one year and got some garlic from them, but it was very small and not really worth the effort.
I always break off the seed stalks as soon as I see them. It makes the plant concentrate on the garlic head rather than expending energy on the flower. This makes larger heads, which is what I want from my garlic. If you get the stalk before it gets too large, you can chop it up and use it in cooking for a light garlic flavor.
If you have a lot of the bulbils, you might plant them in a clump and use the resulting greens in the spring for an early garlic garnish.
Doug Kanter wrote:
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