Is it advisable to plant garlic cloves that are slightly damaged? I only had one bulb have fuzzy mold, which I did not plant, and small cloves that I planted to harvest as green garlic, but I have about a pound of cloves that have small indents, spotty discoloration, or scarring that I’m left wondering if I should go ahead and plant. This is my first year planting garlic; I went with California Late White Garlic.
If that’s all I had, I would plant that. small indents, no matter. treat them kindly and you should have better bulbs for next year’s planting.
I wouldn’t plant moldy ones or any you suspect are a disease or virus, but if something took a bite out of it or you nicked it with your spade reasonably close to when you’re replanting it, I’d go for it.
If in doubt, plant it in a separate space from your primary bed and pay it a bit more attention in case you find it needs to be destroyed. Or trim it up and eat it.
I ended up planting them anyways. Will keep an eye out for diseases. If anything crops up, I’ll harvest it early to avoid spreading it to the healthy cloves.
That looks like bruising to me. Could have happened during shipping. Most places that sell garlic are clueless as to how fragile it is.