only true garlic fanatics will be interested but for those with the patience and time, growing hardneck garlic from bulbils is a great way to increase your stock over 3-4 years. I have a supply of bulbils to share, pm me and I'll give you my address to send a stamped self addressed envelope to. Here is a blog that explains what's involved and the timeline https://goingtoseed.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/growing-garlic-from-bulbils/
I cannot tell you which varietal group that these belong to (because I don't know) but have attached a photo of the bulbs that some of the bulbils came from - couldn't post multiple photos to display in this discussion
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Replies
Hi Megan, it is kind of you to offer bulbils and I would be grateful to have some if you have it again this year.
I am a new member and a small scale garlic grower.I am after hardneck species that have only a few number of cloves in a bulb and good size bulbils. In your description of bulbs in the photo all three of them sound good but I can't really see how big the bulbils are. Those with 100 or so rice size bulbils are not much use. Rocambole has very good pea size bulbils and that sort of bulbils would be very useful to me. Looking forward to your reply, Sook
We are an 20 acre organic olive grove but as you well know olives in canterbury has been in dire condition due to frost so we thought of growing garlic to get a little income out of the land. It has been 5-6 years in a plot made by digging out one row of olive trees. Now I get more of idea but upto last year there wasnt much to sell. Last year was complete failure having had three year drought and not managing to water at right time. We learnt a lesson and this year we made a decent crop of probably about 300kg for the first time. Considering the size of the plot I figure it could produce upto 500kg if doing everything right. We started with artichoke but now trying to diversify and wanting to grow from bulbils, got 5kilo rocambole from trademe a few years back. Turned out rather a inferior species because the bulb has too many cloves. Also short storage life restricts us to produce only a small amount. I got some turban from trademe too and it is good quality with only 3-6 cloves in a bulb but its softneck which means we have to keep back abbout 1/4 of the whole crop to reproduce same amount.
Ideal species would be a hardneck of small no of cloves and bulbils with a reasonable shelf life. I m considering getting an asiatic and a good rocambol variety but didnt know where to look. I came across Todd's blog at google and thats how i got to know ooooby. I wrote to Todd to get some info of his garlic and to buy some good species off him but havent received a reply yet.
Like you we had unprecidented rain especially at harvest time, which makes storing very difficult. It is a surprise though you had a very mild winter in Queenstown. Here in Canterbury we had quite a cold winter and where we are in inland rural amberley we often experience 5 deg lower than in chch so garlicwise it must be favourable.
Most of our crop this year was turban and we finished by pulling out the last rocambole a few days ago. It is a shame i cant use your bulbils as i desperately need to find more economical planting but as a garlic enthusiast you might one day want to recommend some. I ll keep looking.
Rocamboles have a good flavour but don't store well - marginally better than Turbans and they can have up to 11 cloves. Did you notice whether the scapes did the double loop? Are you sure that you were sold a true rocambole? I'm surprised that your turbans don't bolt as the majority of mine reliably do. Having said that last winter was so mild that less than a half of them bolted and they were also badly affected with rust. I am growing what I believe to be a marbled purple stripe - it has small-medium bulbils and only 4 -7 cloves per bulb, good flavour that will need at least three seasons to grow to full sized bulbs but even the smaller bulbs are good to use as they have so few cloves. Let me know if you'd like to try some. I plant the entire umbel and don't bother spacing out the resulting rounds when I replant them. Since they are planting stock anyway, I'm not bothered if they take a while to size up. It's been raining the last two days and there was even a dusting of snow on the mountains this morning.