Doug Kanter wrote:
My garlic plants are doing what ornamental alliums usually do: Producing
tons of seeds. I don't see much on the web about using these seeds. One site
even says the plants rarely make seed. Has anyone tried this? I'm open to
experimentation, but I'm wondering what the time frame is like from sowing
to maturity, compared with the usual method of planting cloves.



To write you my recent experience of same case. We used last autumn
those seed, and few days ago we pull it out. Also during spring we use
it as young (for salad). Time of sowing the same as garlic which is
planted from cloves. It was smaller than regular ones (from cloves), but
now is also little smaller than regular. But all of them from seed are
almost identical size - interesting. Also when we took it out it looks
healthier than regular ( in a last 2 months we had a LOT of rain). But
we will see how it will hold on during winter - in a storage. I didn't
mention that it also made cloves. This autumn we will plant again some
rows from cloves some from seed from regular garlic, and some seed from
garlic which came from seed, also we will plant cloves from garlic from
seed. So little experimenting makes it more interesting.
Once long time ago (I was a kid) we planted it from seed but it didn't
make cloves, just only one bulb- little smaller than normal garlic bulb,
maybe that was garlic for spring planting. I didn't try it ever again,
now as you drove this question, I'll try this too in spring.

Here is classic continental climate (hot summers, cold winters, rainy
springs)-but it's not strictly as it was, i believe this is result of
global warming.