Garlic - what is happening to it?

[Cutecumber]

I've never seen this before and I can find no mention of it anywhere on the internet...

One (and I hope that's all!) of my autumn-planted garlic plants is sending up chive-like shoots. I thought it was grass at first, but then more appeared around the stem.

What's happening, and why?

[lainey lou]

I'm wondering if it's bolting hun? boo hoo, my autumn planted onions all bolted this week.

[Cutecumber]

But nothing is happening to the main stem - there is no flower stalk forming.

[vicky]

Occasionally my leeks and elephant garlic do this and it's cos they have an extra bulb (bulbil) forming at the base.
I assume you broke the bulb up into cloves?
Sometimes when you peel garlic there's a extra bulb on the side, maybe the garlic you planted had these (without you noticing?)
Hopefully the cloves forming will be fine, I know when the elephant garlic does this the side bulbs are titchy and they go straight in the compost!

[Cutecumber]

Interesting.

I definitely broke up the bulb - I've grown garlic for several years without a problem.

I remember that they were big bulbs and had a lot of cloves, but then this is the first time I'ver tried Solent Wight.

[momol]

I am with Vicky , as I got a couple of garlic plant done this last year (this year too) and I harvested more than 1 bulbs from a single clove source. The bulbs form from this splitting are usually significantly smaller than those producing single bulb !

[Snadger]

With shallots, if you plant large shallots you get a lot of small shallots.

Conversely,small shallots planted give you just a few large shallots!

Could be the same with garlic spose?

[Cutecumber]

Shallots and garlic are opposite - choose the smaller (inch circumference) shallot sets, but the largest garlic cloves.

I didn't think my garlic cloves were small, but there were a lot. I chose 12 and chucked the rest on the compost.

I harvested more than 1 bulbs from a single clove source.

I've not come across that before - do you think that my original bulb - which was very big - could have been a bit of a rogue?

Of course, it's very odd that only one plant (out of a dozen) is behaving this way!!

[momol]

I don't know the real explanation CC but my garlic has that tendency.
From the last year harvest, I noticed that some small amount of the cloves has actually 2 to 3 cloves inside but wore a single husk / wrapping. I think my garlic plant that split were planted from those twin/triplet clove. Could it be that is what happening to your garlic too ?
Too bad I don't know my garlic cultivar name and can't compare note.