A couple of my leeks made bulblets on the flower head this year, I planted them up and got 88 off one head, as well as a couple tablespoons of seed. Once planted these bulblets (they had leaves too) grew quickly. I've noticed that my large leeks will generate offsets at their base that grow into smaller leek plants, but I'm not sure if they look like garlic cloves when they're small since I left the large plants alone for seed. Elephant garlic is related to leeks, so I suppose garlic-like cloves do run in the family. Tilling for fall I found some silver dollar sized onion-like bulbs in my beds, assumed they were self-sown onions and relocated them to the onion bed. It looks like they were actually leek bulbs.

This is an interesting thread. I am going to guess that there are several "single clove garlics". I think I have one, too, but it is a standard garlic that stays single clove by apparent culture. I planted very small cloves off full bulbs at the beginning of June this past summer. This particular type seems to produce scapes and cloves very easily if fall planted to winter over, but the cloves I planted in June never were cold treated. They were last of the previous years harvest of a feral I collected in Iowa. Original bulbs were tiny with very tiny cloves. Proper spacing and fertilization has increased the size for fall plantings very nicely. Bulbils are about the size of a pea; so they are nice sized, too. Back to the June planting. Every clove sprouted very quickly and grew to about foot to 14" tall. Not one ever sent up a scape, and the plants never went dry. Nor did any of them ever divide. Just this past week I dug a few and found two distinct types, both still very well rooted by the way - I couldn't pull em I had to dig em up. About half looked more like scallions with very little bulbing and these had the thicker stems. The thinner stems had singleton rounds up to close to an inch and a quarter, larger than even the first true bulbs I originally collected. Not one of this planting has divided nor scaped and the plants are still normally green going into winter. I am leaving about half of the original bed in place to see how they handle the Minnesota cold from a summer planting. They took care of themselves just fine in the zone 4 of NW Iowa for almost 30 years; so I am not too worried their hardiness. This seems to be one of several ways to grow solo garlic (I hope). I definitely expect that different kinds of garlic respond to vernalization differently or require different types of vernalization and probably respond differently to day length as well. I am going to try spring planting on some spare tulip bulbs, too, next summer. A little more size going into autumn would be nice for my Appeldoorns, hoping I can add bulb size, if I sacrifice the vernalization needed for the flowers.

I have two favorite varieties of garlic that I have grown for at least 15 years. When I started growing them they formed good sized bulbs with multiple cloves per bulb. By selecting the largest cloves of the largest bulbs and using them as my planting stock, I was getting a product that I was more and more happy with. Then I noticed, the larger the cloves got, the fewer there were per bulb. I now have selected these two varieties to consistently produce a significantly larger bulb, that has only 4 cloves, sometimes a rogue fifth clove, but not very often. It definitely pays to select for traits that are important to you when choosing planting stock. Steve

Did you notice anything out of the ordinary with the leaves while the plants were still growing; have you any photos of the plants (leaves and roots) when freshly harvested and after curing that you could post together with photos of the cloves? Might help with identifying what the problem is. The only thing that I can think of is waxy breakdown which is believed to be caused by high temperatures during growth and/or after harvest