Hi Megan, I have Elephant Garlic and another hard neck variety that came with the house. Variety unknown but it is a mild variety that keeps well. Additionally I have Egyptian walking onion if you are interested. Acheck@excite.com

What country are you in? I am growing garlic for the first time this year. I bought a box of white garlic (don't know what type) from a garlic farmer in NSW. I ate some, shared some and planted some. They are doing well and still growing. I had some garlic in my kitchen and it had been particularly delicious so planted the last four cloves in the garden along with my white ones. The white ones look very normal (as far as I can tell) but the purple ones are all blooming with several stalks which I guess is witches blooming. I pulled one up and used it on the weekend and it was absolutely DELICIOUS but looked like a bunch of spring onions. If this is the intro to home grown garlic I will never buy garlic again! I will grow it. Do you think the individual garlic strands will grow into something if I just leave them to mature more? Could be the result of all of the above. Thanks everyone for your input.

This is an interesting thread. I am going to guess that there are several "single clove garlics". I think I have one, too, but it is a standard garlic that stays single clove by apparent culture. I planted very small cloves off full bulbs at the beginning of June this past summer. This particular type seems to produce scapes and cloves very easily if fall planted to winter over, but the cloves I planted in June never were cold treated. They were last of the previous years harvest of a feral I collected in Iowa. Original bulbs were tiny with very tiny cloves. Proper spacing and fertilization has increased the size for fall plantings very nicely. Bulbils are about the size of a pea; so they are nice sized, too. Back to the June planting. Every clove sprouted very quickly and grew to about foot to 14" tall. Not one ever sent up a scape, and the plants never went dry. Nor did any of them ever divide. Just this past week I dug a few and found two distinct types, both still very well rooted by the way - I couldn't pull em I had to dig em up. About half looked more like scallions with very little bulbing and these had the thicker stems. The thinner stems had singleton rounds up to close to an inch and a quarter, larger than even the first true bulbs I originally collected. Not one of this planting has divided nor scaped and the plants are still normally green going into winter. I am leaving about half of the original bed in place to see how they handle the Minnesota cold from a summer planting. They took care of themselves just fine in the zone 4 of NW Iowa for almost 30 years; so I am not too worried their hardiness. This seems to be one of several ways to grow solo garlic (I hope). I definitely expect that different kinds of garlic respond to vernalization differently or require different types of vernalization and probably respond differently to day length as well. I am going to try spring planting on some spare tulip bulbs, too, next summer. A little more size going into autumn would be nice for my Appeldoorns, hoping I can add bulb size, if I sacrifice the vernalization needed for the flowers.

Here is a site with lots of info about growing garlic and special considerations for growing them in Texas. I bought my garlic from this site and thus far, I can tell you that all have sprouted and looks strong. http://gourmetgarlicgardens.com/growsouth.htm According to their site, in the South you want to plant softnecks (as stated by others). They recommend planting around the fall equinox (end of September) so that the garlic gets a good head start on spring...good root growth before winter so that when spring arrives, it is ready to bulb up. The reason for this is because in Texas, our 'springs' are fairly short - in that - it gets hot early. So you want the garlic in 'ready to bulb' shape as soon as the temps turn warm. This is from my research as this is only my first year growing it myself. With that being said, I think you may still get a successful crop if you plant NOW. Maybe the bulbs won't get as big. And we could always have a cool spring (who knows in Texas). Here is a link that might be useful: Gourmet Garlic Gardens