Those little garlic cloves are just that ..the seed for growing the big stuff.
The reason your bulbs are so small is that you should have cut off the scapes once they had curled. Cutting the scapes allows energy to go toward growing the bulb rather than making seed. BTW, you can eat the scapes.. very strong garlic flavor, I recommend that you cook them in a sauce because they are so strong in flavor.

I think the little garlic cloves are usually called bulbils, and yes, they can be planted. In one year they usually only produce a "round," a single clove rather than the usual multi-clove head of garlic. Replant the round, and it will grow into a normal head in another year. Some varieties will even take 3 years to reach full size.

Different varieties of hard-neck garlic produce different sizes of bulbils. I have heard that Music bulbils are the size of grains of wheat or even smaller. I haven't grown that one, but Asian Tempest, Russian Giant, and Martin's Heirloom all produce fairly large bulbils that I have planted to increase my stock. Martin's Heirloom (distributed by a (former?) member of this forum, Martin/Paquebot) sometimes produces a divided bulb the first year, bypassing the round stage completely.

If your garlic produced fairly large bulbils, you can use them like regular cloves. That is, when you use a garlic crusher/mincer, just put the bulbils in and crush. The skin will be left in the mincer and the meat will go through the holes.

I feed a handfull of bulbils to my chicken once a month. It's supposed to expell parasites.

Catherine

I cut off the scapes early on but still harvested small bulbs this year - think the hot weather hastened maturity before they achieved their usual size.