Growing Garlic from Bulbils

Growing Garlic from Bulbils

Growing Garlic from Bulbils https://norwegiancreekfarm.ca/bulbils

Why we do it.

Growing garlic from bulbils is an excellent way to quickly increase the amount of garlic that you are able to grow, but more importantly it improves the vigour of the garlic plants and helps reduce garlic viruses in your crop. As well, soil-borne diseases can be avoided as long as you are careful to keep the bulbils away from the ground.

Garlic is adaptive to it's environment, and growing from bulbils allows the garlic to adapt more quickly to your local conditions.

How we do it.

My preferred method of growing garlic from bulbils is to plant in raised beds in short rows running across the bed. Small bulbils can be crowded together, while larger ones like an inch or so of space between them. Leave a few inches of space between each row to facilitate weeding with a narrow hoe.

Plant the garlic bulbils about one inch  deep and cover with soil. Sometimes we add about an inch of organic  potting soil over the entire bed to help with weed suppression. We like to plant quite heavily because during the first year plants seem to like being crowded.

Fertilize as required and water often, as they do not tolerate  getting too dry.

Keep the beds as weed free as you can, and they will be ready for harvest around the same time as garlic grown from large cloves.

Harvest and Replant

By harvest time the plants have produced small bulbs with cloves, or more commonly single rounds. Rounds will generally produce a bigger bulb when they are planted, but in time they all get up to size.

We  try to harvest while the plants are still green as this facilitates getting the bulbs out of the ground. We dig up clumps of plants and gently shake the soil out of the roots.

One important observation -  plants that have produced a scape will have a bulb with cloves, while a plant without a scape will produce a single round.  Both kinds are perfectly fine for planting, just make sure to separate the cloves as you would for a full size bulb.