True Garlic Seed

[joseph]

Originally Posted by Deborah

What does hardneck mean?

It means that it makes a flower. The flower stem is hard, so they are called "hardneck". Some garlic varieties do not flower, so the stem stays soft and flexible until harvest.

[Deborah]

Oh! Thanks for explaining.

[Medbury Gardens]

Originally Posted by velikipop

. As far as I know growing garlic from bulbils takes about three years to produce a mature head of garlic.

If they are given plenty of space they can grow to full size with 10 months growth

[Dak]

Recently I ran across this article, I think it's a good resource for this topic.
http://garlicseed.blogspot.com/p/gro...-seed.html?m=1

[Medbury Gardens]

Yes thats one of the better sources of info

[Dak]

Nice to hear, Medbury Gardens!

It was intriguing to learn here that it might work to put flowering scapes in a glass of water, has anyone done that successfully to get them to seed? I would think seed formation would require the presence of the roots.

[mjc]

Originally Posted by Dak

Nice to hear, Medbury Gardens!

It was intriguing to learn here that it might work to put flowering scapes in a glass of water, has anyone done that successfully to get them to seed? I would think seed formation would require the presence of the roots.

No, I haven't tried it...but as long as you can keep the flower alive, reproduction will progress. I'd be worried about keeping the flower around long enough to finish.

[Kazedwards]

I used the cut scape method last year. I did wait until they had been open, debulbiled, and had plenty of time to be pollinated. A lot of the garlic still had most of the outer wrapper still so I think my timing was perfect. I didn't see any difference in production. I liked this method a bit better only because of the fact the garlic I harvested still had an outer wrapper and kept better because of it. Other wise by the time the seed heads develop and start to dry down the outer wrapper has deteriorated and you pretty much just have the cloves with no wrapping.


-Zach

[Father'sDaughter]

Question -- when you debulbil, are the bulbils able to be saved and planted, or do you need to choose between one or the other -- bulbils to plant or a chance at true seeds? I left three with the scapes on planning to harvest bulbils, but now wondering if I should try for seeds in addition to, or instead of.

[mjc]

For most alliums, 3 to 5 flower stems is the minimum for seed production. So if you use all 3 for seed, you'll need to remove the bulbils.

I'm not sure if the bulbils will be far enough along to be useful when removed.

[Father'sDaughter]

Originally Posted by mjc

For most alliums, 3 to 5 flower stems is the minimum for seed production. So if you use all 3 for seed, you'll need to remove the bulbils.

I'm not sure if the bulbils will be far enough along to be useful when removed.

Thank you. I think I'll stick with harvesting bulbils this year and maybe leave more scapes on next year to try for seeds.

[meganp]

the bulbils will still be fine to plant if you remove them carefully so you can still have a go at producing true seed, it can be your practise run

[Kazedwards]

All the bulbils I have removed do just fine when replanting. Then tend to be a different stages. The outer ones are starting the loosen on there own and the innermost and still forming on my chesnok red when I remove. I know that when Joseph removed his he just lets them fall to the ground. The next year he has garlic as thick as grass!


-Zach

[bower]

I tried this one year with cut scapes of several varieties, Chesnok, Persian Star did flower and also produced a ton of bulbils and the survival rate was probably not 100% but still I got lots of rounds. I managed to coax a couple of flowers out of Spanish Roja but didn't get good survival of fall planted bulbils, which has turned out to be typical of our location here for SR, so it was not about the 'removal' process. Also removed many bulbils from Leningrad and Music, which didn't produce flowers in any case, and the survival wasn't great for removed bulbils, maybe 30-50%. Porcelains in general may be more of a challenge for getting true seed, cw Purple Stripe or Marbled PS varieties, afaik from what I've read.

I didn't get any true seeds in the end, but it was an interesting process. Took months! I enjoyed the flowers.

[Medbury Gardens]

Its getting near the end of whats been a wonderful summer for growth in my TGS beds, yesterday i pulled a few plants that clearly were not going to produce seed, the whole cluster of cloves had regrown new roots, two had sprouted and one had grown a green leaf. That's the vigour of seed grown garlic that i like, the short/nil dormancy.
I also bred leeks and have recently pulled the remaining plants after the last of the seed heads were removed, leeks and garlic being the most closely related out of the Alliaceae family you can compare them to each other in someways. With leeks the stems remain fully green till seed maturity where garlic doesn't seem too at this stage, but with the turn over of each of the future generations through TGS i'm picking that the scape should start to hold that green longer and longer. The leeks i pulled yesterday, half the plants would have rotted out and the tops would have fallen over, but the other half some were regrowing new shoots from ground level, similar to the garlic below. The more extreme example of this is what happens with the perennial leek, seed reproduction while growing new cloves.
Potentially it could be possible through using TGS to select a whole new range of garlic lines, some that grow year round more like a perennial leek with cloves with green leaves that are eaten fresh.