Garlic clove size for planting

[Dazzerelli]

To what extent does the size of the planted Garlic clove affect the resulting bulb size?

I usually plant the fattest cloves from the outside of the biggest bulbs for next year’s crop. However this year my Garlic bulbs are half the size of a normal year’s due to weather and rust. Would I be better off buying some Garlic to seed next year’s crop or does clove size not make that much difference?

Cheers,

Darren

[charles]

 Hi Darren

A good question which I have wondered before. Since the weather has caused this year’s poor growth, as opposed to seed size, I suggest planting the same as normal i.e. our own, fatter cloves from the bigger bulbs of this year’s harvest. I have done this before, with cloves from bulbs which had suffered terrible rust during wet summers, causing small bulbs at harvest time, and the folowing year’s growth was of big bulbs, in better weather.

Then one might ask, why not plant even tiny bulbs?! Maybe someone has dared to do this and I should try, but I think that the larger cloves of bigger bulbs have (a) more reserves to speed a good root system in winter and (b) genetic tendency to make a larger bulb at the next harvest.

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