I'd say get them in the ground too. They prefer a frost over winter which helps them split into a few cloves as opposed to one big monobulb so I'm sure either way you'll get some sort of crop.
Just don't do what I did last year and let the poor things get pot-bound in a teeny pot all summer long
![Roll Eyes ::)](https://chat.allotment-garden.org/Smileys/green/rolleyes.gif)
Never having grown garlic before I decided to get some cloves from Sarah Raven in September 2018 and when they arrived I potted them up and kept them over most of the winter in the greenhouse. I then potted them into the next size up pot to tide them over until I could get them in the ground (prob about February) and moved them outside to experience frost (having just found out they were frost hardy!). Well, long story short, I had crippling depression last year and my poor allotment was completely neglected and when I did feel better (September!!!) and started to tackle the weeds I found my three pots of garlic
![ohmy :ohmy:](https://chat.allotment-garden.org/Smileys/green/ohmy.gif)
I felt so guilty!!! Almost consigned them to the compost heap but when I tipped one out of the pot it had still split into 6 cloves - as had the other two. So I kept 12 cloves to grow this year's crop and we ate the third one!
![tongue2 :tongue2:](https://chat.allotment-garden.org/Smileys/green/tongue2.gif)
The cloves were only half the size of the ones I'd originally bought (probably due to being in a pot instead of the ground) but they're growing really well now
![happy :)](https://chat.allotment-garden.org/Smileys/green/smile.gif)
As an experiment a couple of months ago I bought two cloves from Wilko which were normal sized (ie twice the size of mine!) just to compare the harvest this summer.