Mutant garlic

[Cathy A]

I discovered a mutant garlic in my 2025 garlic bed. In a row dedicated to hardneck (mostly if not entirely Music), there was one plant that grew like chives instead of like hardneck garlic.

Instead of a single thick scape surrounded by leaves, producing a circle of moderately large garlic cloves, it generated a large number of very thin, chives-like leaves with good garlic flavor.

When dug up, it had produced a large number of tiny cloves instead of a few larger ones.

I saved and replanted all of the tiny cloves. I'll be very intersted to see if it breeds true. If so, it could be a very good, easy-to-grow substitute for chives. (I've never had much luck growing chives from seed.)

Has anyone else seen a garlic sport with similar growth pattern?

[Steph S]

It sounds more like something a softneck would do.  Is it possible that a whole small bulb was there from a previous planting?  Or a head of bulbils?

I had some bizarre garlic tops this year in Marbled Purple Stripes.  Double scapes;  scapes with a split line down the side;  one plant produced many tiny leaves at the stem top instead of a scape, but eventually produced two tiny scapes out of those - it had a normal bulb at the end of the day, but when this has happened once before it had no scape at all and did not form a bulb.  So that is not like what you described.

I posted about it at the garlic group on TJ and was happy to learn this is not that unusual, but happens from time to time especially in the MPS.

Good for you to save them to replant.  Will be curious to hear what happens.

[Cathy A]

It's possible that I accidentally mixed a softneck clove in with the hardnecks and planted it in the hardneck row. If that's the case, the mutant would be a Red Inchelium softneck.