Growing garlic from seeds?

Has anyone done this?
Do you treat them as onion seeds?

 

Garlic don't produce seeds.

 

GC shortest thread of the week award

 

I am in the process of growing three trays of garlic pips(not sure of correct term)and within a few days of sowing them they soon shot up and at the moment look a bit like onion seedlings.Not sure how long it is going to be before they are decent sized cloves to plant out but it will be interesting to see how they turn out.

I've never heard of garlic setting seed either....

 

The hard lumps off the side of Elephant Garlic Kandy? I got a few of they potted up Scrunge has probably got a name for them

 

Those are called bulbils (AKA bulblets), but the very small 'bulbs' that form on the 'seed' heads (and up the stems) that start sprouting sooner than bulbils (which can be a bit difficult to sprout) are called pips. Pips also occur on leeks.

Here's one of my lumps

 

No Zigs we never grew Elephant Garlic last year or this year.As Scrungee says these seem to be pips although when I had dried them out last Autumn they look like very small garlic cloves.I assume that I will have to keep pricking them out as they are starting to look a bit crowded.

 

They need to be planted for one year to turn into 'rounds' which are like large, single, undivided cloves, then re-planted a second year to turn into bulbs of individual cloves.

If you've got white rot in your soil, propagation using pips will produce disease free garlic.

 

It is a shame that I don't know how to get a photo on here as I no longer have a laptop,just a tablet so even if I took a photo of my little crop I can't show you how they are growing in the greenhouse.

We do have white rot now in our soil as some of our onions were affected by it last year but the garlic was unaffected.Interesting those bumps on the side of the garlic stems Scrungee...

 

I have to use my old laptop to upload to photobucket Sodding tablets

 

However, you can buy plants in the garden centre. No, I am serious; I took this photo TODAY.

I think it is scandalous what my local Garden Centre Group store thinks it is OK to sell. No discount on this item, its going to need harvesting in the next week or two? possibly even on the drive home ... and priced at £3.99 - how much (little?) does garlic cost in the shops for goodness sake?



and just in case you can't get any spuds at the supermarket they were also selling these 3/4 dead Potato plants, that won't be any use to man nor beast either



:(

 

Here's some Cropped (Sic! sorry!) photos in case you were in any doubt of the plants' lack of suitability for planting at this time:

 

That's outrageous Kristen

 

I pointed out those stupid garlic in pots to Mrs Scrungee (when we were last at our nearest GCG about 5 weeks ago) as a ridiculous idea/waste of money. Far too late to plant, they wont produce bulbs this year, only 'rounds' (a swollen, round, undivided clove that hasn't bulbed up) which will either need lifting/replanting to get a bulb next year, or leaving in-situ over winter.

That looks like 6 max? garlic plants per pot. You can buy some bulbs of garlic and 6 cloves would only cost about 33p (and not £3.99 as above!).