Commercial Garlic Grower Tip Indicates a section especially pertinent to farmers
Bulbils & Umbels

Umbels can be purchased in our Online Garlic Store. Select them from the cultivar's product page drop-down menu. Each product page provides information about how many bulbils are, on average, contained within each umbel.

We allow a good number of umbels to grow to maturity for each cultivar. However, if you know ahead of time that you'll be wanting a large quantity of a specific type, please contact us so that we'll be sure to reserve them for you. If possible, contact us before scape removal in June.

German Umbel with Bulbils

What is a Bulbil?


Are bulbils the true garlic seed?

One of the most fascinating features of hardneck garlic cultivars is that they still "bolt," which means that in the second half of their growth they produce a towering stalk (the scape) that carries at its tip the now mostly impotent reproductive organs of the garlic plant. There are delicate, tiny flowers that emerge if the scape and the umbel at its tip are left to mature, and there are also tiny (and not so tiny depending on the cultivar) bulb-like features contained therein; but these tiny bulbs are not garlic's true seed... they are bulbils.

Why plant bulbils?

Bulbils are like miniature round or oblong cloves. They can be eaten just like a clove (many people don't bother peeling them but simply crush them and use them in recipes) but more importantly for us, they can be planted.

Commercial Garlic Grower Tip There are several reasons to plant bulbils, either instead of or in addition to planting mature cloves. Unless you're in a big hurry and need to bring a full crop to market next year, try building your stock using the bulbil method. Benefits to farmers include:
  • exponential growth of seed stock (see chart below)
  • purging of all soil born disease (nematodes, fungus, etc)
  • gradual acclimation of cultivar to your growing conditions
Rapidly increase planting stock

Compare bulb vs bulbil propagation for the Porcelain cultivar Yugoslavian.
  • Cloves per Yugoslavian bulb = 4
  • Bulbils per umbel = 200
   1st Year  2nd Year  3rd Year
 Bulb
(4 cloves)		 4 
(bulbs)		 16
(bulbs)		 64 
(bulbs)
 Bulbils 200 
(rounds)		 200
(small cloved bulbs)		 800
(larger cloved bulbs)

A $3.50 bulb will yield 64 bulbs in three years, worth approximately $100 at retail prices ($10 per pound). 

A $4.00 umbel of bulbils will yield about 800 bulbs in three years, worth approximately $1,000 at retail prices. (We're even rounding down by 25% here to account for smaller than usual bulb size in the third year.)

How Do You Plant Bulbils?

 

Selecting the Cultivar

Growing from bulbils can be fun and profitable. Use the same criteria used to select which bulb to plant (cf. Selecting Garlic "Seed" Stock) to choose which cultivar of bulbil will best suit your culinary and gardening needs. Here's a quick breakdown of what you can generally expect from umbels/bulbils in a given family of garlics.
  • Porcelain: 100-200 bulbils the size of a grain of rice; 3-5 years to maturity
  • Rocambole: 10-25 large pea or marble sized bulbils: 2 years to maturity
  • Marbled Purple Stripe: 40-60 medium sized bulbils; 2-3 years to maturity
  • Purple Stripe: 80-140 small bulbils; 3-5 years to maturity
  • Creole: 70-100 small bulbils; 3-4 years to maturity
  • Turban: 40-60 medium bulbils; 2-4 years to maturity
How to Grow Garlic Bulbils

Bulbil Furrows

All but the biggest of bulbils (Rocambole bulbils are huge and can be planted with regular spacing, or at least 4 inches apart) are planted differently than cloves. You can literally plant thousands of bulbils within a very small area. Here are the steps we use:

NOTE: Bulbils can be very difficult to distinguish from weeds in the springtime. We plant in furrows so that it is clear where the bulbils should and should not be coming up. This makes it much easier to weed around them.
  • Use a 3/4" thick board that is a few inches less long than your bed is wide and create furrows approximately 1.5 inches deep across your bed. You can tap on the board with a hammer or just use your hand to wriggle down into the soil.
  • Distribute your bulbils in this furrow all the way across. Unless they are very large, it doesn't matter if bulbils are upside down or not, so you can sprinkle them rather than placing them one by one if you like. Use the following spacing:
    • Porcelains and other rice grain sized bulbils should be spaced about 1/2" to 3/4" apart.
    • Marbled Purple Stripes and other medium sized bulbils should be spaced about 1" apart.
    • Larger bulbils should be spaced about 2 inches apart, and the largest should be 4 inches.
  • Gently cover the bulbils with soil and pat it down.
  • Water them in but don't saturate the soil.
Russian Red Bulbils in Field
Russian Red bulbils growing in furrows
Porcelain Bulbils in Spring
Porcelain bulbils growing in furrows

What to Expect


We've received many inquiries in the early spring from growers who are wondering just exactly what they should be looking for in their bulbil patch. Does it look like regular garlic but smaller? How does one tell them apart from weeds? Things like that. Very good questions and we'll list the answers here.
  1. Bulbils typically emerge two to three weeks later than their clove counterparts.
  2. Bulbil shoots are much smaller (depending on the cultivar) than their clove counterparts. They look very much like a blade of grass so be careful when weeding (see our NOTE above about weeding).
  3. Bulbils can be left in the ground until the top growth has turned brown. With most cultivars you'll end up with what's called a "round" the first year. It could be anywhere from 1/4" diameter up to 1" or more. A round is a bulb that consists of just one clove, typically round. The exception to this is the Rocamboles, the bulbils of which are quite large. We get full bulbs (though small) with 5 or 6 cloves in the first year from our German Red.