Gatlic bulbil viability

[Nematode]

Originally Posted by neoguy

Just an FYI, Henry is a professional, a farmer that grows thousands of heads every year. His info and experience is exceptional and welcome.

Thanks for that, had no idea.

[Durgan]

I plant the garlic in October. Both cloves and bulbils, and rounds. Some years it is quite warm and the plant grows above the mulch maybe three inches. It snows and covers the plant, and some years it even melts and completely exposes the growth part. Come Spring it simply starts growing and almost no damage. At best a bit of browning on the edge of some leaves.

I plant and add three inches of wood chip mulch and the plant has no difficulty pushing through this layer.

My conditions are Zone 5. Seldom does the temperature go lower than minus 20C. The ground is certainly frozen to some depth below the bottom of the planted bulb.

So now I plant and growth before freeze up concerns me not.
http://www.durgan.org/URL/?ZJEBE 24 April 2015 Garlic
Garlic survived the Winter well.
http://www.durgan.org/URL/?MYHED 18 October 2014 Planting Garlic
About 100 cloves of hard neck garlic was planted for harvest in July of 2015. The cloves were saved from my 2014 garlic harvest. Only the largest cloves were selected for planting.The cloves were removed from the bulbs by pressing a table knife through the center of the dried scape. This effectively opens the bulb and the cloves can be easily removed.Each bulb has from 5 to 8 cloves. Usually only five are large and nicely shaped. The smaller not suitable cloves will be utilized for table use Some years I have been short of seed so used he smaller cloves and found no perceptible difference in size of the bulbs. But if I have sufficient only the largest perfect cloves are utilized. The cloves were planted at six inch spacing with the pointed end up and about two inches into the soil from the top of the clove. No hole was made but the clove was firmly pressed to insure a close affinity with the soil. Pictures depict the process.

[bower]

My reason for joining in this thread is to learn.

Here are some rounds that I lifted today from those flats. All the bulbils came from cut scapes that were in a vase with some water for... months I guess. It seemed forever.

[Durgan]

Those rounds are excelleent. They should make good seed for next year. Where do you live in Newfoundland?

[bower]

Originally Posted by Durgan

Those rounds are excelleent. They should make good seed for next year. Where do you live in Newfoundland?

I'm in the "sun belt" about twenty minutes drive west of St. John's. It's a better microclimate, but we still had a lousy summer. In Torbay and east of St. John's, it's always a nasty summer. Yes I am happy about the size of the rounds, bulbils are so worth the effort.

[Nematode]

Bower those are nice rounds.
Were they october planted and left outside?

[bower]

Originally Posted by Nematode

Bower those are nice rounds.
Were they october planted and left outside?

Yep.

I used a mix of commercial compost and potting soil, and a little bone meal at planting time. The smaller tubs had larger bulbils and I spaced them pretty carefully based on their size - but I lost a lot of them, and probably because these tubs didn't drain as well as I expected. The larger flat I've used before and drains really well, they were mostly pretty small bulbils so I just broadcast them and covered with maybe half inch soil. I usually mulch all the garlic with raw kelp but I had none, so the little tubs got some leaves I raked up and the bigger tub I ripped up a patch of chickweed to mulch with - not much cover and had to weed it then.
All told, I was glad they did as well with pretty sloppy care.

[Nematode]

Bulbil update.
Planted what I had in the sawdust bed with the rest of the garlic. Wasnt expecting much, but have some coming up, looks like grass at a glance.
Squirrels terrorized the sawdust beds, nice easy digging for hiding acorns I guess.
Anyway will have a few rounds from the bulbils this year and will make a serious effort of it this year to grow seed garlic from bulbils.
Thanks for all your help.

[Kazedwards]

I just read this thread and feel I can add to it.

The first year I grew garlic was in 2014, planted fall of 2013. I planted 16 Chesnok Red AKA Shvelisi. When it produced scapes I decided to try to get true garlic seed. True garlic seed is seed produce by sexual reproduction instead of asexual or cloning. Bulbils are produced by asexual means and each plant produced by bulbils is genetically identical to the mother plant. Anyway the best way to produce TGS (true garlic seed) is to remove the bulbils when the scape opens. So that is what I did. It was very tedious work. The first few are the hardest but once you get those the rest get easier. I did get 206 TGS and have 2 plants currently growing from those seeds in the garden now. The bulbils I just kept them in a bowl in the garage. They lasted just fine for me. I planted several the following spring are they grew great. I still have over a thousand in the garage now from last year. They last forever for me here and they get plucked out as soon as the scape opens fully before they, or the scape, dry down. I also do not spread them out. I'm not sure of the germination rate but I'm sure its high. The are very resilient. @joseph Lofthouse and I have both used this method of plucking out bulbils to get TGS. He has a whole field of garlic grass now because when he plucks them out he lets fall to the ground and disregards them. They are all growing now unintentionally.

Also I will say that different varieties have different bulbils. Some have 5 large bulbils. Other have over 100 tiny bulbils. In 2014 my 16 Chesnok Red produced around 800 bulbils.

Here is a few pics too.
The garlic scapes that first year

The scapes after the bulbils were removed in 2014

All of the scapes last year.



-Zach

[Kazedwards]

I'll post a pic of the 1000+ bulbils I have now in the next few days.


-Zach

[PhilaGardener]

Looking great, everyone!

[henry]

Our 2016 garlic bulbil beds Five 100 foot beds.

[Nematode]

Beautiful

[Nematode]

Henry,
Do you get full size garlic when planting the rounds?
Do they need another year?
Thx

[Father'sDaughter]

Originally Posted by henry

Our 2016 garlic bulbil beds Five 100 foot beds.

Extremely jealous.