[svalli]

I'm not expert about growing garlic in areas without cold winter, but to me it looks like lack of vernalization has caused this odd growth to happen with the WalMart garlic. You should pull one and check, if there those have started to form cloves and all those small leaves are growing from each clove separately.
I have heard that in some cases when hardnecks have been planted here in the spring without vernalization that those have produced thick leek like stalks without any bulb formation. This could also be what has happened in your case. If there is no cloves formed you could use the whole plants in cooking like leeks.

When garlic grows normally, each leaf forms a layer in the wrapper of the bulb. If the bulb has multiple layers of cloves, some of the inner leaves form a wrappers around the inner cloves. The individual clove skins should not have leaves above ground.

Since I grow my garlic almost at the North Pole, I grow mostly hardnecks. I pull my garlic when there is at least 5 mostly green leaves left, because then after cleaning I should still have 5 layer clean wrapper around the bulb to make them store better.

Sari