My harvest from last year's garlic bulbils

Last year, I let a couple of the metechis I grew go to seed, and I planted the bulbils. Some of the bulbs that grew from that batch were nearly normal size and some were teeny. If you look at the picture, most were like the one in the middle. On the left is one of the cloves from a larger bulb and on the right, one of the smaller cloves. I think I planted about 50 and ended up with 27.

I think what I'll do is plant them all this fall, even the teeny ones. My thoughts are that if I could get good-sized bulbs from bulbils, I should do okay with those itty bitty cloves. Guess we'll see.

My takeaway: I guess it's possible to get a regular first-year harvest from just bulbils, even if the end product is small.

P.S. I did not end up with any "rounds", as some people do.

P.P.S. I'm in zone 6a, with soil that has lots of clay. I planted in November.

It's impressive the tiny bulbils can grow to full size bulbs in a year! If you have plenty to experiment, you can sort through the cloves and grow them in different ways. Plant biggest cloves in the fall for large bulbs next year, medium sized ones for greens and smallest ones for pearl garlic. I assume the "round" ones you mentioned are solo or pearl garlic. They need to be planted much later (early April for me) to skip vernalization so that the bulbs won't divide.