Garlic has a chilling requirement of 8 weeks minimum. Then you must determine proper day length for proper bulb formation. Seems to me a lot of work for something that is so easy to do outside. But, I love a good experiment as much as anyone. Good luck.

Steve

I have over 2000 garlic cloves of about 12 species growing outdoors and I know they don't require much work, but I'm trying to see if proper bulb formation can happen with less time. I am currently trying them out for 3 weeks outside, then brought indoors to hopefully develop fully.

One thing I'm finding is that they need to be stimulated enough initially, then take the colder temperatures to form the round and regardless of anything else, the larger cloves are definitely growing thicker stems than the small cloves. It seems like garlic doesn't mind temperatures in the single digits at all unprotected.

I think you may be right about the 8 week requirement for dormancy because the garlic I have growing indoors by the windowsill are way too skinny. I think another factor which may be leading to their poor growth is the lack of summer sun since they seem to be growing much skinnier and weaker looking than the plants i typically get out in my garlic beds by March when the soil starts to warm up while the sunlight also starts to intensify.

Generally iplant outside , I nefore the ready to

Steve, my garlic survives -20 outside a few times every winter with no more protection than just pushing the cloves into the bed. Most of my varieties will also send up some foliage in the fall before hard frost too. Garlic in nearly all its varieties is very hardy.

I had a good return of nice sized bulbs one year from a late planting of Music cloves that must have been in cold storage all winter. Planted the end of May and harvested as full sized bulbs that cured properly by the end of July and worked as seed stock the next fall, too. Well fed, well mulched and well watered they were. It is still safer to plant in the fall.

I would not count on mature rounds inside, unless you have enough light, enough cooling and have figured out the daylength, else they may not even actually go dormant or bulb up at all.