Our Garlic Scapes are currently maturing their Bulbils and are ready for order! This year we left a lot of our heritage garlic bulbs in the ground, intact with their scapes. They have now just about completed their growth into seed bulbils. Bulbils are delicious. One customer at the farmers market told me he loves stir frying them! They are like tiny garlic bulbs and are genetic clones of their parent (so aren’t like a true seed born from a flower).
If you are contemplating whether to grow from cloves or from bulbils: Bulbils take longer to grow. It takes several years to grow full sized bulbs and you need to harvest and replant each year of the propagation process. Growing directly from garlic cloves take only one year on the other hand.
However, the benefits of bulbils are that there are tonnes of them on each garlic plant – thus you can increase your garlic stock with less expense. Secondly, the bulbils never touch the ground, so there is less chance of spreading soil-borne disease, which some growers are prone to.
We look forward to harvesting our bulbils later this week – they make for a great seed bank / genetic stock reserve, should anything go wrong with our garlic bulb stock.
I love garlic with a pasison! I remember going to the Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California as a teenager, where among other things, I ate garlic ice cream! My heart thrills as well at the sight of garlic growing in my garden. The braids I’ve made and hung in my kitchen give me a little thrill every time I look at them. Friends swoon when they receive a bottle of olive oil with garlic cloves suspended throughout .tied in raffia. And, my Garlic, Ginger, Honey Throat Elixir is wonderful for chasing away a nasty sore throat. There are few things more gratifying then harvesting the work of the earth the sun, the soil and your own two hands! And I don’t think you’ve lived until you’ve had some roasted, mellow garlic spread on a crusty baguette! I hope your readers can try growing some of their own garlic, it’s so worth it! Love that Kiera is standing sentinel over the whole process! When I cook raw for the dogs, guess what goes in? Yep, garlic. Great tutorial by the way!