World’s Smallest Garlic

World's smallest garlic

Have you harvested your garlic yet? After curing and cleaning off my crop this season, I came across these tiny bulbs of Siciliano artichoke garlic.

Each bulb measures less than an inch across and fits perfectly between my fingers! Sometimes you get a clove that grows throughout the season but never divides itself into individual cloves (a natural phenomenon called single-clove garlic or garlic rounds). But, I’ve never heard of a clove that divides itself throughout the season but never grows!

Tiny Siciliano artichoke garlic

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July 18 2012      7 comments
Hierbas   Jardín

  • Su

    I planted garlic bulbils for the first time this year which mostly grew rounds which I will plant this fall but 3 or 4 of the larger bulbils actually turned into tiny garlic bulbs like yours.

    • http://www.gardenbetty.com/ Linda Ly

      I’ve heard that bulbils take a couple of years to form mature garlic heads, so you’ll probably get some decent-sized bulbs with your second planting!

  • Gtnsailor

    Looks like good garlic for pickling! Yum!

  • Leela

    Betty ~ I have a garlic question that I can’t find an answer to online. We harvested our garlic and have bunches of tiny bulbs like yours. This is because some of the garlic sets we planted were tiny cloves that I intended solely for garlic greens. We planted so many that much of it fully matured (to the 1 inch size) before it could be eaten. I don’t want to mess with separating these tiny bulbs and replanting as individuals for more garlic greens and definitely not worth the effort to clean them up for cooking.  Soooo, could I just replant the whole tiny bulb head this fall and get small groupings of garlic greens out of it in the spring? Thank you for your beautiful blog!

    • http://www.gardenbetty.com/ Linda Ly

      Yes! Just plop the tiny bulb into the ground, and the greens will grow in a cluster (which will make harvesting easier). Bulbs won’t form with the cloves so close together, but since you’re only planting the garlic for greens, this won’t matter.

  • http://southernruralroute.wordpress.com/ Linda Jones

    So where did you stumble on this teeny tiny garlic?

    • http://www.gardenbetty.com/ Linda Ly

      Just in my garlic bed, amidst all the other full-sized garlic.

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