There’s a big difference between ‘garlic seed’ and ‘seed garlic.’ Most people plant seed garlic, and if you’re dealing with a reputable supplier, that means planting large well-formed garlic cloves from healthy disease-free stock. More often than not, it actually means planting the garlic that feed stores buy from farmers that were too ugly or misshapen to be sold in a grocery store as cooking garlic. Garlic seed, on the other hand, is made in abundance after homegrown garlic plants flower in the late spring or early summer.
Northern gardeners know that garlic scapes are a real spring treat. After the garlic has grown tall and healthy, it sends out a coiling flower known as a garlic scape. Generally, those garlic scapes are cut off as soon as they appear because if the plant puts it’s energy into seed, it won’t produce a large bulb.
A densely planted garlic patch, with a plant every 4 to 6 inches means a lot of scapes to harvest. I harvest garlic scapes for stir-fries, omelets and garlic scape pickles. Every year, try as I might, I always miss scapes in the garlic patch.
In late summer and early fall, they mature into heavy heads with small garlic bulbils and those are true garlic seed. While an heirloom hard neck garlic variety may only produce 4 to 8 large cloves to be saved for seed, it will produce somewhere between 20 and 100 little bulbils if the scapes are left intact. As you can see, growing and saving garlic seed instead of seed garlic pays back in huge dividends.
Each tiny garlic bulbil is like a miniature garlic clove and is in effect a garlic seed. The total amount of garlic seed produced depends on the variety, and types that produce huge numbers are favored by ‘seed garlic’ farmers that use the ‘garlic seed’ to grow out huge crops of garlic bulbs to sell to backyard gardeners as planting garlic cloves.
If you read through wholesale catalogs targeted at farmers, varieties will say “great for propagation, variety produces over 100 bulbils per plant.” Knowing that many commercial growers are taking the time to plant garlic seed rather than seed garlic drives home the point that it’s by far the most cost-effective way to propagate garlic.
Harvesting Garlic Seed
Start by leaving a few scapes on garlic plants in the spring. They’ll mature into garlic seed by the late summer, and be ready for harvest once they dry and the plant begins to die back. The garlic bulb at the base of the plant will still be usable and fully formed, but likely much smaller than the other bulbs nearby.
Break the bulbils apart and leave them to dry in a protected, well-ventilated area for a few days. Since they’re not underground they condition much faster than curing a garlic bulb. After a few days, store them in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight until the fall.
Growing Garlic from Seed
Planting garlic seed is a bit different than seed garlic cloves. While seed garlic cloves will produce a harvestable crop the following year, garlic seed takes a bit longer before harvest. The tiny bulbil is much smaller than a garlic clove, and the plant will need a full year to get established in the soil and grow to the size of a garlic clove. Another year later, it’ll produce a full harvestable garlic bulb.
Start by planting garlic seeds in the fall at the same time as your regular garlic bulbs. They should be kept separate because they’ll take extra time to mature and you’ll be disappointed if you accidentally harvest them with your garlic crop the summer following planting.
Garlic grown from bulbils can take up to three years to mature if the initial garlic seed was quite small. How big the bulbils are will depend on the garlic variety, and they range in size from large peas down to the size of a grain of rice. The largest specimens can produce harvestable garlic in as little as two years, while the tiny ones will need a full three years to mature.
In that time, they’ll mostly just need to be left alone. Keep them in a mulched, weed-free bed and quietly bide your time until the eventual harvest of a huge crop of nearly free garlic. Without the considerable expense of seed garlic, which generally sells for $3 to $5 per bulb, this harvest is almost free.
In the meantime, you essentially have perennial garlic that’s helping deter pests from the rest of your garden.
ron harris
thank you so much for your wonderful site , i have learned so much from your articles .
from s.e. Texas , Ron
Ashley Adamant
Thanks Ron! I’m glad it’s helpful.
Dhananjay
Nice information. But Sorry we can not say bulbils a seed coz after all it’s a vegetative propagation. Seed are made from fertilization of two gamates. The bulbils may spreed viruses. But after all the are better then growing seed garlic
Dorothy
I was inspired by this article to try planting garlic seed this year. I’m wondering: how deep do I plant the seeds? Thank you for your helpful blog!
Ashley Adamant
The same as you’d plant any garlic. The plants themselves just drop them in the fall when they start to die back, and you can just scratch the small ones into the soil or actually carefully plant them. Honestly, I just rake back a bit of soil under my apple trees, toss down a handful and then push 1/2 an inch of soil back over them. They come up in patches that way and help with natural pest control.
Lance
I have been growing hardneck garlic from the same cloves for about 8 years now. About 30 This year I missed cutting off a scrape. It flowered and now I have beautiful garlic seeds from the flower pod. Like the size of corn kernals. Now if I am understanding of what you say and I plant these seeds in the fall, they will not be able to to grow up until after 2 summers. So then after the first summer, they’re going to be left alone in the ground for a second winter. Then the next spring they’re going to just start growing up again? I would think that the second winter would kill the plant.
Ashley Adamant
We’re in zone 4 and we’ve had garlic in the ground growing as a perennial for 10+ years. Garlic is generally very hardy, and can overwinter without issue in zone 2-3. You shouldn’t have an issue overwintering it unless you’re in north most Canada.
BK
HI,
only question how to buy garlic seed? from where I can buy garlic seed?
Ashley Adamant
Usually, people buy garlic bulbs for planting (more info here: https://practicalselfreliance.com/growing-garlic/). I do not know anywhere you can buy the topset bulbils, we just harvest them from our plants.
Sarah Steidinger
Thank you for the article! I just ordered some and was unsure of exactly how I should plant. I was going to plant it this Spring, alongside my fall planted garlic…boy would I have been disappointed come next fall haha!
Carmen I
I’m growing some of the seeds I gathered from some of my scapes. I planted them in small pots and within 3 days they started growing. After 6 days they are between 1/2-1″ tall, I have them in a heating pad in my walkout basement. I will be planting them in an area of their own after the snow melts. (Minnesota-zone 4A). They are from garlic I have been growing for a couple of years. I certainly don’t expect actual garlic bulbs this year, but they are an experiment to see if I can grow them to full size, enventually. They are German extra hardy hardneck.