since you've been growing garlic for several years you know what to do so i rule out that. but you planted very early, maybe that has something to do with it. i assume you are harvesting at correct time based upon your past experience and the description of your plants.

garlic does not require much water so i seldom every water it unless we don't have rain for 3+ weeks which is almost impossible here.

lack of any fertilization, i don't know. neither garlic or onions really require must fertilizing. they do require good rich soil, i add bone meal for both and blood meal for the garlic. after that they get 2 or 3 sprays of neptune's harvest and nothing else.

when do you normally plant the cloves? here it is mid oct to mid nov, most of ct is zone 6 but i'm in 5b, i plant about the last week of oct to week 1 of nov. what state are you in? when is your ground starting to freeze. even early september seems way too early and august is just out of the question. when do you normally plant the cloves?

tom

Well, the three hardnecks I pulled as a test failed to make cloves, too. Is this an epidemic or what? Sure hope the whole crop isn't like that. Too soon to tell, though.

Mollina,

I was out looking around in the field yesterday and saw a couple plants that were dieing down so I dug them up to find the same thing you probably did...just a plant with some roots but no bulb. I don't know why this happens, some sort of genetic flaw in that clove is what I'm thinking. That really shouldn't happen since each clove is an exact replica geneticly of the plant it came from and from the plant that one came from.

Out of 15,000 plants I might get 10-15 of these that don't form a bulb. look up fertilizer requirments for garlic, you might be surprised.