What Do Garlic Seeds Look Like? Demystifying True Garlic Seed vs. Bulbils

Garlic cloves are used to add flavor to many dishes and carry plenty of health benefits. Garlic naturally keeps bugs out of the garden, and you can use the bulbs or the scapes, which are the green fronds that the bulbs grow. Scapes can be eaten fresh or used in various dishes.

Garlic can be planted in the fall up to six weeks before the first hard frost. Garlic should be planted in the fall, but it can also be planted in the spring as soon as the ground can be worked. It is best to grow garlic from the bulb. The cloves should be broken off of the bulb and planted with the pointy end facing up. Garlic can also be grown from seeds, but it is much easier to grow from cloves and is rarely grown from seeds. If planting the cloves, never use cloves from the grocery store. Plant the cloves 2 inches deep and 4 inches apart.

Garlic repels pests from the garden, so it doesn’t have much trouble with them. If planted in the fall, mulch the garlic heavily with straw for overwintering. Remove the mulch in the spring after the last frost. Water every three days once bulbing begins, typically around mid-May. Weed frequently in the spring.

Garlic can take up to 210 days to mature. When to harvest depends on the weather. Garlic is ready when the tops turn yellow and fall over, but before they dry out completely. In northern climates, fall planting will lead to a harvest in July. In southern climates, it depends on the planting time.

Make sure the bulb wrapper has not disintegrated, and carefully lift the bulbs with a spade or fork. Brush off the soil and let the plants cure in an airy spot for two weeks. You can hang them upside down with a string to cure. The bulbs are cured and ready for storage when the wrappers have a paper-like consistency. The root crown should be hard and dry.

As soon as the garlic scapes come up from the ground, they are ready to be picked because they are soft enough to eat right away. As the scapes grow longer, they become tougher. Snip with shears to harvest the scapes without harmer the bulb.

Since garlic has such a long growing season, it is a heavy feeder. When you plant the garlic plants, fertilize them with compost. If you planted them in the fall, keep fertilizing them in the spring. Fertilize with a side dressing or spread the fertilizer over the entire bed. To side dress the fertilizer, work the fertilizer into the soil about 3 inches from the plant. Garlic requires adequate nitrogen, so fertilize accordingly. Blood meal is a good source of high-nitrogen fertilizer. Once you begin fertilization, fertilize the garlic every three weeks.

Being able to care for a plant while it grows and then harvest it for use in tasty recipes is always fun when growing vegetables. But keep an eye out for pests and diseases. Pests and diseases can affect different plants in different ways. It’s important to know this so you can keep an eye out for them and take any necessary precautions to keep them safe throughout their lives.

Plants with bulb mites won’t grow as well, and bulbs can rot in the ground or even while they’re stored. The mite looks like a pearl with legs. If they damage the plant, it can allow another invasion from other pests. Practice crop rotation, and treat garlic seed cloves with hot water before planting.

Leafminers can create white splotches on the leaves and the leaves will fall off the plant. If the leafminers infect the plant when it is young, it can reduce its yield. To stop this from happening, remove plant debris from the soil as soon as the harvest is over, and use insecticides once the damage is known.

Thrips will create discolored leaves and scarring, and affected garlic plants may look silver in color. To prevent his, don’t plant garlic or onion-related plants near grain fields. Overhead watering may help reduce the thrips. Apply insecticides once you identify the damage as that of a thrip.

Nematodes cause the plant to be stunted in growth and the root system won’t have fine roots. There also could be irregular lesions on the roots. Nematodes can live on a wide range of plants, so crop rotation will not work very well to get rid of them. Instead, use hot water dips to kill the nematodes that are in the bulbs.

Downy mildew will create pale spots on leaves and a fuzzy growth on the surface of the leaves. Leaves turn pale and then collapse. Apply fungicide to treat and plant in well-draining areas.

Purple blotch will create water-soaked lesions on the leaves and stalks. Once they enlarge, they can become purple in color. Infected foliage may die. Practice crop rotation and reduce leaf wetness.

Leaves and stems with rust will have white spots on them, and if the rust gets bad enough, the leaves may die. This disease prefers high humidity and low rainfall. The wind can transport the spores far distances. Plant in well-drained soil and control weeds, use a fungicide if necessary.

White rot will cause older leaves to yellow and stunt the leave’s growth. All leaves will then die, and a white growth will appear on the bulb’s base. This disease can survive up to 20 years and can cause major crop loss. Treat seeds with hot water before planting, use crop rotation and apply fungicides if available.

There are people who might be happy buying garlic at the store because it is a cheap vegetable that is usually easy to find. At the grocery store, it also is sold in different varieties, such as minced, cloves and garlic powder. However, gardeners are of a different breed and likely wish to grow their own garlic at home. If you’ve ever grown vegetables, you know that garlic doesn’t do well in full, rich soil like most other vegetables do.

Garlic is a unique plant in that it rarely produces true botanical seed like most other plants. This leads to confusion among home gardeners about what exactly constitutes “garlic seed.” In reality there are a few different structures that get referred to as garlic seed only one of which is technically true seed produced through sexual reproduction.

In this article, we’ll clarify the differences and demystify what garlic seeds really look like.

Garlic Sets Bulbils, Not True Seed

The key fact about garlic is that it predominantly reproduces asexually through bulbs, rather than sexually through seeds. Each garlic bulb consists of multiple cloves, which function as clones of the parent plant when planted.

In this way garlic is primarily propagated through its cloves, not seeds. However some garlic varieties also produce small aerial bulbs called bulbils on the tips of scapes. Since these bulbils can be planted like seeds to grow new garlic plants, they are often referred to as “garlic seeds” or “seed garlic.”

Botanically speaking though, these bulbils are not true seeds in the strict sense. They are simply miniature cloned offspring of the original bulb, not the result of sexual reproduction through pollination.

So while bulbils will grow into new garlic plants, they do not constitute true garlic seed. That distinction belongs exclusively to seeds produced from garlic flowers.

Rare True Garlic Seeds Resemble Onion Seeds

On very rare occasions, usually under ideal conditions, some garlic plants will produce a cluster of small black seeds after flowering. This is the only true garlic seed, created through sexual reproduction when garlic flowers are pollinated.

These seeds resemble onion seeds in appearance – very small (less than 1mm), oval shaped, and dark black or brown in color. They are contained in a seed capsule at the end of the flower stem. Once mature, the capsules split open to release the seeds.

However, garlic seed is exceedingly unusual and the vast majority of garlic plants fail to ever produce it. Usually the flowers fade away without forming seeds. The chance of finding true garlic seed in a typical garden is very slim.

Why Doesn’t Garlic Produce Much True Seed?

There are a couple key reasons garlic rarely sets seed:

Garlic is primarily propagated vegetatively. Like many other bulbs and tubers, garlic has evolved to favor asexual reproduction through its cloves over sexual reproduction through seeds. This cloning results in uniformity and predictability.
Garlic flowers must be pollinated. In order for seeds to develop, the tiny flowers in the flower cluster (umbel) must receive pollen from another garlic plant. But garlic plants are largely self-incompatible, meaning they cannot pollinate themselves or other plants from the same clone. This makes successful pollination and seed production unlikely.
Few insect pollinators. Garlic flowers attract relatively few specialist insect pollinators compared to showier, more fragrant flowers. Minimal pollinator visits again limit the potential for pollination.

Seed sterility. Even if pollination occurs, many garlic seeds end up being sterile and fail to sprout when planted. They lack the genetic diversity needed for good germination rates.

Due to all these hurdles, true garlic seed is more of an oddity than a reliable way to propagate the plant. There’s a reason garlic has persisted for centuries by using cloves instead of seeds!

How to Identify Garlic Bulbils vs. Seeds

Since seeds are so uncommon in garlic, it’s important to be able to distinguish bulbils from true seeds:

Garlic Bulbils

Found on the tips of curly flowering stems (scapes)

Resemble very small cloves of garlic, without separated cloves
Color varies from off-white to purple; smooth outer covering
Usually spherical or tear-drop shaped

Size ranges from a grain of rice to a small pea

Garlic Seeds

Contained in seed capsules at the tips of flower stems

Resemble tiny black sesame seeds or poppy seeds
Too small to discern shape without magnification
Rarely present; most flowers fade before forming seeds

So in most cases, any viable “seeds” collected from garlic plants will actually be the aerial bulbils, not botanical seeds. True garlic seeds are hard to find.

Growing Garlic from Bulbils vs. Seeds

Both bulbils and seeds can be used to propagate new garlic plants:

Bulbils – Require 2-3 years to reach full bulb size, but are easy to grow. Just plant them like cloves in fall.
Seeds – Can produce full bulbs in 1-2 years when grown under ideal conditions. But germination rates are usually poor and growing seedlings is more challenging.

For any gardener wanting to grow garlic, using the tried and true method of planting cloves saved from bulbs is definitely the easiest approach. But bulbils offer a nearly endless free source of new plants over time.

And for the truly experimental gardener, nurturing garlic seed into new plants is an exciting (if finicky) endeavor. Just be aware that collecting viable garlic seed is rare outside of a controlled setting.

Where to buy garlic bulbs:

You can find a large collection of different garlic varieties at Urban Farmer.

Garlic can fall victim to several different pests and diseases.

Some of the common pests affecting garlic include bulb mites, leafminers, thrips and nematodes.

Some common diseases garlic plants experience include downy mildew, purple blotch, rust and white rot.

Downy mildew will create pale spots on leaves and a fuzzy growth on the surface of the leaves. Leaves turn pale and then collapse. Apply fungicide to treat and plant in well-draining areas.

Purple blotch will create water-soaked lesions on the leaves and stalks. Once they enlarge, they can become purple in color. Infected foliage may die. Practice crop rotation and reduce leaf wetness.

Learning Download: How to Cultivate the Best Soil for Garlic

What kind of soil does garlic need?

Garlic grows best in a well-drained sandy loam soil. Depending on where you are growing your garlic, the soil may be too rich or more like clay. If there is too much clay, the soil will stick to the bulbs and be hard to get off after harvest. It may even stain the garlic wrapper. More water is held by clay soil than by sandy or loamy soil. If the garlic sits in water for too long, it will rot. If your soil is clay-like and you can’t change it, you should grow garlic in raised beds or big pots that are at least 12 inches deep. This is because the garlic bulb grows below the soil line. To be really cool, you can even turn an old milk jug into a pot to grow garlic in.

Growing Garlic From TRUE Seed

FAQ

What are the seed pods on top of garlic?

You’ll notice in early to mid-June that your garlic is sending up a stalk from the center of the plant. The stalk is thicker than the leaves and is called the garlic scape. The scape, if left on the plant, will form a flower and then seed (you can eat those tiny seeds! using a garlic press is the best way to do that!).

What are the seeds on top of garlic?

Some types of garlic (hardneck) send up a seed head, called a scape. It needs to be removed so that the plant concentrates its energy on making nice bulbs, not seeds. The scapes are a delicacy in the kitchen and one of the last seasonal crops left on the market.

What is the difference between garlic seeds and garlic cloves?

Seed Garlic is considered to be the garlic cloves that are separated from the harvested garlic bulbs, which are then planted in the fall. (Seed Garlic is often left to grow for a couple more weeks than garlic that will be sold as food so they grow a bit larger).

What does a garlic plant look like?

The seeds form into small bulbils, which look like tiny garlic cloves on the end of the scape. Genetically, these are identical to the parent plant, and there will be no cross pollination between different varieties grown together.

Is garlic powder just as effective as a garlic clove?

In terms of flavor profile, garlic powder is much stronger as it has been dried and granulated. Around 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder is the same as a garlic clove. The health benefits of garlic would remain the same if it is pure garlic powder.

Is garlic a seed?

Garlic is typically grown from cloves, or occasionally bulbils. Although you may see or hear it referred to as seed, seed garlic, or even seed stock, the truth is garlic doesn’t usually set true seed, and on those rare occasions when it does, garlic seed resembles the small, black seeds of onions.

How do you know if a garlic plant is mature?

When garlic is approaching maturity, the leaves running up the stalk turn yellow then brown, starting at the bottom of the plant and moving up. The leaves begin to lose their vigor and start to flop over. This is a good sign that your garlic is approaching maturity.