Results from my bulbil plantings

[svalli]

I have now harvested almost all the rounds, which were grown from bulbils. I planted some into pots last fall and buried those to the raised bed soil and covered with piece of foam insulation. When the ground had thawed I dug the pots up and let the shoots emerge outdoors.

Some bulbils were planted into pots this spring and kept in the greenhouse in the beginning. Later I moved those outside, when the greenhouse was getting too warm. Those grew the shoots sooner than the ones planted during fall.

What I noticed was that the fall planted bulbils produced bigger rounds. Watering and fertilizing for these was the same, but the potting soil was different. I'm not sure what caused this size difference, but this makes me wonder, if I should keep on planting even the tiniest bulbils already at fall time.

An exception to the size of fall planted was with one rocambole, which had so huge bulbils that I planted some into Rootrainer cells in the spring and transplanted to the field same time as some spring planted garlic. These field grown produced the biggest rounds and one started even growing a scape. However the ones which grew in containers whole time produced bigger rounds in the container, which was plated during fall. Some of the spring planted and container grown stayed same size as the original bulbils.
This variety is the most common with home gardeners in Finland, but I have not grown it earlier and finally got a bag of huge bulbils late last fall. It goes by name Alexandra and may be same or similar as Red Russian. Now I have enough large rounds to plant those directly to the field this fall and see next year how it grows compared to the purple stripe and marbled purple stripe, which are most of my hardneck varieties.

Sari