Why didn't my garlic bulbs form cloves?
Garlic is normally planted in the fall and harvested the following summer once its leaves have died back. During the cool months, when your garlic is actively growing, the bulb swells into one large, undivided bulb. As it matures, the bulb separates into individual cloves, forming as many as it can before the hot weather arrives. Sometimes, as you're discovering, this process doesn't fully complete, resulting in solid bulbs that are sometimes referred to as 'single clove garlic' or 'garlic rounds'.
There are a couple of reasons why a garlic bulb will fail to form cloves. The most common is that the bulb was planted in the early spring and didn't have enough time to mature before the hot summer weather arrived, arresting the bulb's development before it had a chance to form cloves.
Another reason is that even if you planted your garlic bulbs in the fall, they may not have been cold enough, long enough to form cloves. Under normal circumstances, exposing garlic to forty days of temperatures under 5°C isn't a problem, but if you applied mulch to your garden prior to the ground freezing, you may have accidentally made things just a little too cozy for your garlic. This year try to either leave your garlic unmulched or add a thin layer after the ground freezes to avoid this problem. Growing garlic in a greenhouse or a cold frame can also have the same effect.
Sometimes garlic will form a single clove for no obvious reason. It is not uncommon when growing a bunch of garlic to have one of them form a single clove while the bulbs on either side form cloves properly. This usually gets blamed on faulty genetics.
The good news is that if you replant your single clove garlic this fall, it should form a bulb with fully individuated cloves next year. The bad news is, of course, that it will have taken you two years to produce the results you were hoping to produce in one. Not ideal, but not the end of the world either.
If you have a mixture of single clove garlic bulbs and bulbs with fully developed cloves, plant the fully developed cloves and keep the single cloves bulbs for your kitchen. Their thick skins mean they store longer and peel easier than standard cloves.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me at vanessa@gardenmuse.ca.
