| Those little bulbs are called bulbils, and yes, you can plant them just like regular cloves of garlic. They will eventually form regular bulbs, but it will generally take at least two years for them to do so. This fall, you could plant all of those individual bulbils. You wouldn't need to plant them as deeply or space them as much as individual garlic cloves. The bulbils will sprout in the spring and grow just like your other garlic, but they'll make smaller plants. When you harvest these plants next summer, you will find that each plant has produced a 'round,' essentially a single garlic clove. Next fall, plant the rounds just as you plant garlic cloves and in the second growing season you'll be rewarded with many garlic bulbs. Planting bulbils is a quick way of propagating a large crop of garlic, compared to the usual method of replanting most of your garlic crop from the first year. It takes two years to get a usable harvest, but you can produce a really large crop in just two years, and all from a single bulb of garlic. |
