OK, garlic and bulbils.
For those that don't know what garlic bulbil is, it is the tiny little clove-like looking thing inside a mature garlic scape...that curved flower-looking thing that comes out in June from the centre of a hard-neck variety that some people call flowers, but it's not a flower. Now, we usually clip them off to send more energy to the growing bulb underground, but in 2016 we left one go and harvested the mature scape and the bulbils inside.
Why? They say, that propagating the bulbil, which is a clone of the parent and not a DNA combination of two parents, once matured, will be superior to the original parent in both size, quality and disease resistance. Sounds like a good plan right? Well it can take 4 years to achieve this...which brings us to the fall of 2016. Now, I grow utterly fantastic garlic. I mean, it is pure gold and have had many comments from garlic lovers that what I have (and I've been doing this for over 25 years perfecting what I have), is a superior product. But...one always like to try to do better.
So last year in the fall of 2016 I planted a number of the tiny bulbils. They are the size of a ball-point pen tip. I actually thought they were a write-off, but lo and behold...success!!! As I said already, this can be a 3-4 year process, successive plantings to finally achieve a large adult that rivals the original parent. These will be re-planted this fall and will be year 2!
After year 2, I expect bigger "rounds" which is a singular round garlic clove. Year 3 may product either another larger round, or a small cloved-garlic. Year 4 should be the keeper. Stay tuned!!!
Below is a pic of the 25 little rounds from 2016 bulbils.
