Single Clove Garlic
Single clove garlic has appeared in the shops of late, all the way from China, it looks great, taste good, you can roast it whole in it's skin and scoop it out to eat with a teaspoon, or slice into coin sized discs and fry crisp, a pure delight.
To Grow your own you need 'Bulbils'
If you want to grow your own it's going to take you two seasons as
far as I can work out from my research on-line.
Getting 'Bulbils'
What to do with the 'Bulbils'
Plant them as you normally would in November and leave them
Getting 'Bulbils'
It's not that hard, plant some extra garlic now, let it grow, don't remove the scape/the flower head that forms, as one normally would do to force growth energy into the bulb, instead leave this to grow and let the flower-head fully develop, you'll notice that it's made up of tiny cloves or 'Bubils' let the plant run the season and yellow out. At this stage cut the flower head and store the 'Bulbils' in a dry place. Harvest the bulb as normal or leave it in the ground where it'll produce garlic grass for you to enjoy in Spring
Nb. If you leave the garlic bulb in the ground over winter by Spring it will grow flat leaves like Grass this may be handy for those of you that don't have 'Wild Garlic' naturally growing in your area, like on a rooftop in Manhattan.
What to do with the 'Bulbils'
Plant them as you normally would in November and leave them
to grow as one would, and single clove garlics will/should be produced.
I came across references to growing single cloves while researching availability of 'Wild Garlic' in the Philadelphia area in March for a demo I was doing there at the International Flower Show. Luckily I was neglectful of some garlic last year and out of curiosity I kept the little tiny garlic cloves' or 'Bulbils' as I now know them to be and have them planted. I have the ' Garlic Grass' growing,stage one is complete! See below for updates.
RESULTS IN!
July 16th 2012.
I planted a few bulbs of shop bought garlic in a patch on the allotment early April, not the normal recommended planting time, one would usually plant October -November for the next seasons crop. I paid no particular attention to them and let nature take it's course, the weather has been terrible in many senses this year mainly wet and the slugs rampant, by early July the tops had disappeared and I thought I'd lost the garlic to white rot or something. At the weekend I proceeded to dig the ground over to make way for a sowing of lettuce and was delighted to find though the tops were gone there was garlic there and that most of it was single bulb, a result, true, though not by by my proposed method. Most of it is small only a couple of them making size of the store bought grade, but then they always use standardised selections for sale.Some of the bulbs had started to divide into cloves also suggesting a randomness in growth stage has something to do with getting a crop of single bulbs. Indeed the single bulbs for sale in the shops maybe a bi-product as opposed to being a specific target crop. Approximately 85% of the the harvest were single cloves. So for a crop of single bulbs the easy thing to do at the moment it seems is to wait until late March /early April ,buy a couple of regular bulbs from any greengrocer and plant them and crop them in July.
Single clove garlic grown 2012 in Ireland, not a lot, not massive but a result and they
taste fantastic! Fresh Irish Single Clove Garlic.
Nb.I'm Still waiting for results from the ' bulbils' I planted and currently letting my one of my Elephant garlics go to flower in anticipation that the 'Bulbils' method works as Elephant garlic cloves are expensive to buy. .
