So I'm wondering when I should start shopping for this year's garlic bulbs so that I can have a decent selection. I was thinking mid-July, but is that too early? While I wait for September-October, will my garlic get yucky or moldy or...? Where do you like to buy your garlic?

Also, is it possible that for some reason, a hardneck garlic would stay floppy? Or was I flim-flammed? It never flowered either, but grew nicely, then got weak and flopped over into the soil entirely. I finally harvested it all before it rotted.

And finally, I planted all the cloves, including the bulbils, and it looks like the bulbils grew one single fat, round clove each. Is that what they're supposed to do? They were pretty cool-looking, and I pureed them with some olive oil this morning to freeze for later use. I'm just wondering if I was supposed to get something different from them.

Thanks so much!

My local garden/seed store starts selling garlic bulbs in September/October, as they can lay dormant over the winter and then they produce an early spring harvest. I'm not sure if you plant them now that you'll have a harvest in the fall. The gardening book I have says that if the leaves droop and fall, just tie them together with a string to keep them off the ground. As to why only one large clove grew out of each garlic, I'm not sure, could have been spacing.

If by bulbils you mean the little pea sized bulbs that grow on the flower stalk, then a round is what they are supposed to make. If you were to plant that round again, it will produce a garlic bulb with cloves.

Rodney

If you do end up buying garlic in July and receiving them soon after, as long as the garlic were properly dried and cured they can be stored until your planting time. I stored my own harvest last year in a basement (65 degrees, 50% humidity) from July to October and had no problem at all.

You can't really order garlic reliably before midsummer. The reason being that companies will be sending you bulbs in the autumn from the crop harvested this summer. So they don't know their stock until after the harvest. And they won't send your garlic until a little bit before the appropriate time for planting in your area, as has been mentioned. Cheers!

After a little more research, I discovered that what I thought were called bulbils were not bulbils at all. I meant that I also planted the little teeny cloves that were in the bulbs I bought (when everything I'd read said just to plant the big cloves). The majority of what I got were rounds though, rather than heads, so I'm thinking that probably means something more like the growing conditions were less than ideal (which they definitely were--poor soil, planted later than I should have, and I think the mulch cover DH used was too heavy).

Thanks for the input, everyone! I'm learning a whole lot really fast this first year, and my head is kind of spinning :-)

I have also purchased from the garlic store in Colorado, they have a wide selection. I have also purchased from Territorial where the quality is good but I always find the prices kind of high.

I really love Music, Georgian Fire, Pskem river and Georgian Crystal. Chinese pink is a great, very early softneck, but it must be planted extremely late in the season to do well (I plant mine Nov-Dec, instead of early October for the rest). I had a few hardnecks fall over this year. It was the first time I've had that happen. I know they are hardnecks as they are from my own saved garlic.

Bellatrix

When I bought Chesnok Red, the consensus was that it won't keep very long but actually my harvest last year were good for at least 7 or 8 months when they ran out.

I never realized you can spend this much time thinking about garlic varieties but it is kind of wonderful to be able to do that. The story of how a lot of these varieties came to the US is also wonderful.