First, I will say - too much wine, and now I type.
I'm just now (in my life) attempting to play around with seeds, mostly to see how the hydroponic setup works rather than actually growing something. One day I see the only thing sprouting is garlic in the fridge, and doing so with a vengeance in a short time, so I broke up the garlic sections and stuck them into the 5.5 acid dirt. I have 6 or 8 sprouts (I forget how many) blasting to the sky. Every day that I go out to feed the feral barn cats, the garlic must be .5" taller than the day before. Exciting!
All were planted at the same time. The other two double-bucket systems are doing (almost) nothing. One with Hollyhock seeds (weeks gone by, no sprout), and the other with carrot seeds (weeks gone by, finally on 8-28-16 tiny little hair-like sprouts! Are those carrots?) Poor timing, bad seeds,...? Anyway, the fridge garlic is growing quite well; I will watch those tiny little (carrot?) hair-like sprouts with great interest. With clean dirt, they can only be the carrot seeds I planted weeks ago. Whatever they are, it's Something!
I read about 'bolting' with garlic and onions - what does this mean?
My elevation is around 6000' in zone 5a (?) a tiny little unreadable finger of narrowness in NM zone map just 12 miles east of ABQ, so small I can't see my own self on the map.
Regardless of what 'bolt' means, I am enjoying the sight of growth of new leaves each day taller! If it grows garlic one day, is it good to put into spaghetti? ;-)
I love the pictures of your gardens!