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Growing garlic from seed can be tricky, as it’s nearly impossible to get your hands on “true garlic seed.” You can, however, grow garlic from top-setting bulbils, which behave like seeds (though they’re not in a technical sense).
I’m going to walk you through how to harvest and cultivate garlic from bulbils produce at the top of the plant, that many people call “garlic seed.” You can, in fact, harvest these above ground as well as a mature garlic bulb for your kitchen below ground.
Table of Contents
(This article discusses top-setting garlic bulbils, which many people call “garlic seed.” They’re technically clones of the parent plant, rather than true seed produced by sexual reproduction and pollination. It is possible to produce garlic seed, but it’s quite tricky. That’s a different process, that’s much more complicated. If you’d like to learn the specifics, I have an article here on hand pollinating garlic to produce true garlic seed. For the rest of us, not all that concerned with the technical differences between bulbils and “true seed” I’m going to walk you through the easier bulbil method below.)
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 its 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.
I have planted the bulbits and now they have grown into a sliver of grass. When do I harvest these? I read that I can transplant these also. Is that true?
It typically takes around three years for this garlic to mature. In that time, it’s best to just leave it alone until it matures.
Hello. Thank you for all the great info. Just to clarify. What happens when you leave the garlic (grown from bulbils) alone? Does it just die back again in the winter and sprout again the second year and the third year after that? Also, when do you know how to harvest them? Do they then have scapes like the normal garlic? Getting ready to plant garlic from bulbils for the first time:)
If you just leave them, they will just continue to grow in clumps. You can leave them in the clumps or you can divide them and replant. Here is a post about growing garlic as a perennial. https://practicalselfreliance.com/perennial-garlic/
Just curious if I can plant the “seeds” indoors under lighting or in the greenhouse? or do i need to plant them directly into the ground?
Either way is fine, but since they’re frost hardy you can just plant them outdoors even early in the spring as soon as the ground can be worked (like with peas). That’ll likely work out better than in a greenhouse, since they go dormant during the hot part of the year in mid-summer.
You provide excellent info on growing garlic from bulbils. You, unfortunately, also provide misinformation by calling it seed. True garlic seed is rare but does exist when flowers produced by the umbels get fertilized.
Please do just a little more research and correct the errors on your otherwise excellent article.
Thank you so much for that information on garlic seed. Ashley actually did this article on true garlic seed that explains it a little better.
https://practicalselfreliance.com/true-garlic-seed/
Will I be able to harvest garlic scapes in first summer after planting the garlic seed?
They won’t send up scapes the first year likely. Scapes will most likely have to wait until the 2nd year after planting if you’re using bulbils.
I’m sorry, but this article is extremely inaccurate! The bulbils that set atop your scape are NOT TRUE SEED! They are a genetic clone of the parent plant (Ted Meredith…see below.) They are bulbils. “True seed,” are the little tiny black seeds that SOME garlic will produce. Here’s what Ted Meredith has to say on the subject. He’s the author of “The Complete Book of Garlic,” but I like to call it, “The Garlic Bible.” The following is a copy/paste of PART of the article “Growing Garlic from True Seed” by Ted Jordan Meredith and Avram Drucker.
“Garlic growers sometimes refer to garlic cloves that are reserved for planting as “garlic seed,” but what we want to talk about here is garlic from true seed—the product of sexual reproduction. Garlic seed is a bit smaller than onion seed, but otherwise resembles it. In the first generations of garlic seed production, growing garlic from seed is not particularly easy, but neither is it out of the scope of the average grower—and with subsequent generations of seed-produced garlic, the process becomes much easier, as we will discuss later.”
“Why even bother growing garlic from seed when growing garlic from cloves is much easier? Asexual reproduction, growing garlic from cloves or bulbils, produces a genetically identical clone of the mother plant. This can be desirable for ensuring uniform continuance of a preferred cultivar. However, if asexual reproduction becomes the exclusive method of reproduction, as has essentially been the case with garlic over the centuries, the implications become quite negative.”
The entire article can be found at http://garlicseed.blogspot.com/p/growing-garlic-from-true-seed.html. Also, These two authors worked together to create a new garlic…and it took several years! Check out Avram Drucker’s “Garlicana” website.
PLEASE update your blog to reflect accurate information and stop confusing people!
You are in fact correct. I wrote this a long time ago, and I did use poor word choice. They should be referred to as bulbils rather than seeds.
I did however attempt to grow true seed (article here: https://practicalselfreliance.com/true-garlic-seed/) but neglected to update this older post. I’ll fix it now.
Can garlic be planted in the same bed/space as the previous year?
I always try to rotate everything in my garden from year to year. This helps to keep the soil healthy and reduces the risk of pests and disease.
You can also eat the bulbils , Melted into a grill cheese sandwich is best
Yum!
Would the bulbuls need to be peeled to be used in cooking?
How do I know when the seed on the top of the garlic is ready to be taken off so I can plant again. They have cracked open so can I take them off now or do I have to wait for them to dry more.
They are ready for harvest once they dry and the plant begins to die back.
Hi. If I dry the bulbis, how long will they keep? I have alot and hope they will keep for years.
I don’t believe they would keep that long. They really need to be planted within 6 or 7 months. I would just plant them and then you can harvest new bulbils once those plants mature.
My neighbor gave me some bulbils in late summer 2019 (he has a self-perpetuating patch that does whatever it likes). I planted a few but most sat forgotten in a dish and weren’t planted until spring of 2021. Even so, nearly all of them came up. The ones I remembered to plant in 2019 made cloves and scapes that are just now ready for harvest — some were in a very dry spot and the only difference is they were ready sooner. I let them cure in the ground until the tops were completely dry, and they seem ready for storage.
Can I plant and transplant bulbis? Or do they need to be direct sown?
You can transplant them, yes. Transplanting tends to stunt them though, we did that one year and they grew much less than the directly planted ones.
I have just collected scapes from my garlic plant, and plan to dry them. Is it safe to say I can dry them and keep them till next fall to plant or will I have to plant them this fall to ensure survival?
We’ve had some keep an impressively long time, but they may not make it to next fall (though we’ve had some last over a year). I’d suggest getting them into the ground this fall.
Ashley: Loved your article on growing garlic from seed.
Questions:
You mentioned that garlic plants help fight bugs…which bugs on which plants?
Can I transplant the immature, growing bulbs without harm to them, for example, in the fall at the end of the first growing season or in the Spring at the start of the second or third growing season? I would do this to put them in locations to be companion plants for fighting bugs on other plants.
Thx!! -AC
We plant them around our fruit trees and around the border of our garden to help prevent pests.
I am posting again. I found a bed with volunteer garlic, the same where I picked some scape “seeds”. Since I had some room in a bed where I planted potatoes so I transplanted some of the volunteer garlic. It is now July. I saw two of the small volunteers’s leaves were drying so I decided to pull them. I allowed them to day for a few days then I peeled the outer layer and each has two fully formed garlics, smaller but large enough to use in the kitchen. Turns out that they are different varieties. One German Extra Hardy and the other Music based on the coloring. There are a few dozen additional plants, that I have yet to pull, because they are still green.. I’m quite happy. My regular garlic is read ready to pick. I’m planning on letting some of the ones from seed to stay in the ground one more year to see what happens.
Wonderful, I’m so glad it was a success!
Hello Ashley,
Thanks for a wonderful article! We have been planting beautiful garlic from heirloom garlic that was gifted to us three or four years ago. I have a lot of bulbils from our 2022 harvest that were dried and stored in a cool dark area for the last 1.5 years until they sat out in the hot sun for the past two weeks.
1. What is the shelf life of bulbils, and can we still try planting these, or should we wait and use this year’s (2024) crop instead?
2. Must we wait until the fall to plant them, or is there any reason we cannot plant now in July. We are in Kentucky in growing zone 7.
3. Is planting directly into the ground the only way to do it, or could we plant them in seed starting containers now (or in the fall)?
Thanks so much!
Dawn
You might as well try to plant them and see what happens and then you could also plant some from the new harvest. It won’t hurt to plant them. You can actually grow garlic as a perennial and leave it in the ground all year. You could probably plant them in containers and then transplant but I don’t have any idea how well they will tolerate the transplant.
I almost have similar questions. I need help because am in dire need of venturing into garlic cultivation.
Answers to those questions:
You can plant them anytime the soil can be worked, you don’t have to wait until fall. Here’s an article on spring planting garlic, which also works with bulibils: https://practicalselfreliance.com/planting-sprouted-garlic/
You can start them like seed if you want, that’s fine. They get very deep roots eventually, but it’ll take a while and you can start them in containers.
I’ve had 2 year old ones do fine, so long as they’re still looking good. They should be firm, with the paper wrap still on them and not moldy/squishy. They can store quite a long time in ideal conditions.
You can plant them anytime the soil can be worked, you don’t have to wait until fall. Here’s an article on spring planting garlic, which also works with bulibils: https://practicalselfreliance.com/planting-sprouted-garlic/
You can start them like seed if you want, that’s fine. They get very deep roots eventually, but it’ll take a while and you can start them in containers.
I’ve had 2 year old ones do fine, so long as they’re still looking good. They should be firm, with the paper wrap still on them and not moldy/squishy. They can store quite a long time in ideal conditions.
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.
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!
HI,
only question how to buy garlic seed? from where I can buy garlic seed?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
Thank you Dhananjay for this comment. I was shocked and alarmed at the misinformation in this article that hasn’t been changed and clarified even after you’re comment. I too just submitted a comment. Hopefully it will be posted. It contains a link and information by respected author Ted Meredith. Hopefully the administrator will update her information. If note, at least we tried! 🙂
thank you so much for your wonderful site , i have learned so much from your articles .
from s.e. Texas , Ron
Thanks Ron! I’m glad it’s helpful.