Yes that's right. The Persian Star rounds I planted in the fall were from bulbils the previous year. So I guess that makes these year three. I'm going to take a close look though because for sure one or two of them have the clove 'bumps' already.
Zipcode makes a good point, I think some varieties may divide more readily than others, too.
And my farm friend pointed out, some varieties are also prone to produce "doubles' in the field ie more than one stalk, maybe there was a split internally we couldn't see or they are prone to divide while growing.
I have a few of these this year too...
My impression is that the purple stripes like Persian Star and Chesnok Red have more cloves per bulb than a porcelain, so those cloves can be quite small. For example last year my Chesnok shrunk to very tiny things but had all their fully wrapped tiny cloves - you could never hope to get a full size bulb from such little ones.
The rounds that I dug were the smaller ones I planted, and the tops are less than pencil thick. I can only expect that the cloves would be very tiny if they formed. So my best chance to get full size next year, is if the rounds I harvested early don't divide (or aren't already divided inside).
The only garlic I've grown to full size from bulbils are the Music now in year four. Last year was quite a bad year for my crop, but instead of making the usual four but smaller cloves, the Music made only two cloves apiece but they were a nice size clove. The plants from them are as big as any of the commercial size seed stock I got from the farm last year, so it looks like they are reaching full size at year four.
Not as many as I expected but, they are from nothing so that's got to be good.
