hey @walkerland, beautiful, informative post as always! ;) have you tried this? i've been curious about it, especially because, as you say, the little bulbs are acclimatized to your soil. really interested in developing place-based strains like this.
we've been letting some cloves just stay in the soil and do the whole split in place thing and just create patches of smaller, but tasty garlic. also curious how that will turn out. i do love hug beautiful sexy garlics, but also curious about creating "no plant" garlics basically available year round in the soil... we also have "walking onions/egyptian onions" unto this effect.
you know, I never thought about just leaving some bulbs in the soil. I think that's cool. I might try that this year! I love just letting things do what nature intended them to do. I will also look into the "walking onions/egyptian onions" because that sounds right up my alley. Hopefully our climate is favourable to that!
Yes, we have grown from umbels. We had trouble with flooding so I lost most of them but I have a handful that grew. We pulled them up they were cute little miniature bulbs. They were replanted (in a better no flood location) and I guess it's just a matter of replanting each fall until you get the size you want.
They come up as very delicate wisps so weeding and mulching is really important. I'll dig up some photos if you want.