Garlic leaves turning too early? / Garlic Woes

[Vanisle_BC]

Some outer leaves on my garlic are turning brown although they're not yet making scapes. Seems a bit early? I don't recall it happening in previous years, long before harvesting. I wonder if they have a problem.

All of my overwintered alliums - leeks, shallots, onions - were bolting and I pulled them yesterday. Should have harvested them sooner. Now they'll have to be 'cored', chopped and stored in the freezer. Even the shallots were making seedheads. So far I've left them in the ground. But I'm thinking I should probably lift them. They're hybrid and I don't want seed.

[Gary350]

I have noticed the same thing with my garlic. Some plants have been small for 2 months and not getting larger. Plants are starting to make dry dead leaves it is 93° now an I water every day. We had 35" of rain this spring, now no rain for 13 days garden is dry as desert. I was not expecting plants to be ready to harvest for 3 or 4 more weeks. 1 large plants has a large bulb. It appears some of the 100 plants have died. Out of 100 plants we may have 20 good size garlic bulbs. Wait and see.

[pepperhead212]

It has been bone dry here, so I have had to water these on a timer, and it has also been very cool, until just recently! Just yesterday, it looked like I had no scapes, and today, almost all of one variety (the Montana Giant) was getting scapes, and the German Extra Hardy and Estonian red is getting some scapes. Not a single one of the Metechi has a scape, but they are always the slowest. They are doing very well, however - the years I've had trouble with the garlic have been when I had too much rain, which has definitely not happened this season!
Garlic, 5-24. L row, German extra hardy. Middle row, Estonian Red, R row, Metechi. In the back, Giant Montana. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Scapes finally showing up on most of the garlic. 5-25 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

[!potatoes!]

interesting. I suppose it may have been not quite as hot and not quite as dry here. I haven’t done any extra watering outside of the extra water they get when I feed them. (and that just a couple times). no scapes yet, no yellow leaves.

[applestar]

Mine has been yellowing, too, but I didn’t respond when you posted @VanIsle because I thought my problem was due to neglect — it had/has been very dry and I had not been watering.

HOWEVER, we have storms in the forecast, so I decided to dig the worst of the stragglers up while the ground is dry’ish... before they got waterlogged... and DISCOVERED THEY ARE BADLY INFESTED BY ONION FLY MAGGOTS! (Now I remember why I was moving away from growing onions and garlic for a while....)

I ended up digging up the whole patch. mind you these are the neglected garlic that didn’t get harvested last fall and decided they would show up this year anyway, some in clusters where there had been unharvested bulb. So I have no attachment. But I did clean them up by peeling layers until no more maggots — most are in the stem and not in the developing bulb it seems. Some had started to scape, so I harvested those, too. And I cleaned up the greens — some are tender enough to use, and others I might use for stock.

The ones with better greens were less infested.... Have you checked yours? Hopefully this is NOT the issue your have.


Also, last season, they all scaped and bloomed and then did whatever happens after that — all under the insect screen low tunnels (I don’t know now if I removed the tunnels just in time for the flies to get at the garlic earlier this spring.... ) Any way there were a whole clusters of tiny, fingernail sized bulbules with grass-like leaves. I can’t tell if these are garlic-grass weeds — that’s what they *look like*. I planted some of them in 4cell-paks of potting mix to see what they would do.

[Gary350]

You made me curious so I dug up 1 of our small garlic. No cloves, it is just 1 round garlic bulb about 1" diameter, 1 of these will be good in tacos. It is interesting this garlic grew on its side & it was about 3" deep. I need to look back at last years 2020 thread to see what I planted? If we have 50 of these it is better than nothing. I dug down just to look at 1 of the large garlic plants the bulb is larger than a golf ball. Garlic can all stay planted for a while longer.

[pepperhead212]

Hopefully, that is just a freak occurrence with that one plant. But that is like what happened with me many years ago, when 3 varieties of rocombole garlics did not form cloves - Spanish Roja was the worst, looking not much larger than the cloves I planted! Yet, the other 4 varieties did great. I found out that rocomboles need a deep freeze, even more so than other hardnecks, and that was a very mild winter here, with some things, like parsley and Swiss chard, living through the entire winter. I never planted rocomboles again since then - it usually freezes well enough, but I never know!

[Vanisle_BC]

My garlic bed has white rot . Don't know where it came from. All my seed cloves were from last year's apparently-healthy harvest. I'll have to dig up the lot and burn anything that can't go to the kitchen. I don't even know if the kitchen is a viable option. Just hoping my other raised beds aren't affected. Some of them have leeks & onions: They look healthy so far.

What a disappointment. Garlic was my never-fail crop. We use it a lot but haven't had to buy any for many, many years. Moan, whine, gnash!

[applestar]

Wow that sucks.

Maybe plan to process the usable garlic Outside using the bbq grill rather than inside in the kitchen to minimize tracking and hopefully burning or heat sterilizing anything questionable?

Since the hottest part of the summer is arriving, you might have the option for solarizing the bed. Look into heat tolerant soil microbes for helping the process. There is one type that is anaerobic and heat resistant/tolerant — supposed to be powerful and effective, but they say it makes the field smell like the sewer.... I think there are other options.

I wonder if it would help to try growing garden mushrooms in that bed after solarizing it?

Good luck!

[Vanisle_BC]

I've seen solarisation suggested to rid the soil of white rot but the same article said you should turn the soil over and do it in layers, going down a full two feet. I won't be doing that! Luckily I have several unconnected raised beds and so far their alliums look OK so perhaps they are not infected. If I just have to make sure I no longer grow them in that one bed, I can live with that.

Good suggestion, Applestar, about the BBQ. At any rate I'll have to be super careful about 'harvest' and disposal.

[Vanisle_BC]

We dug up the whole bed, saved a few maybe-usable bulbs (puny with no cloves), dipped them in diluted bleach, rinsed & set out to dry. All the rest of the plant material is in garbage bags for the dump. Couldn't burn it this time of year. Dipped all the tools in the bleach solution; even our gloves.

I have quite a number of labelled rounds from 2-3 years back, plus a paper cup full of unidentified bulbils so I have what's needed to start a disease free line. But that won't give me a decent crop for two, maybe three years.

Meantime I found this which sounds interesting.

https://www.growveg.com/guides/how-to-c ... white-rot/

"Garlic Extract Cure for Onion White Rot?

There is a glimmer of faint hope, and that’s adding garlic extract to the soil. The idea is that this causes the sclerotia to sense allicin, the chemical that gives onion family plants their scent. This tricks the sclerotia into germinating and, finding no host plant to infect, they will starve and die. This may help reduce, if not completely eliminate, the disease.

To make garlic extract, take a bulb of clean, disease-free garlic and discard the papery wrappers and the basal plate. Crush the whole bulb into 10 liters (two gallons) of water. Water it onto areas of your garden that you’re not currently using for growing allium family crops. Don’t be shy – use a lot!

The whole 10 liters (two gallons) should be applied to two square meters (21 square feet). Do this when soil temperatures are between 15 and 18°C (59-64°F) as this is the optimum germination temperature for the sclerotia. An easier option is to rake or water in garlic powder, which you can buy quite cheaply in large containers from equestrian suppliers.

[Vanisle_BC]

Nope, this turned out to be the first symptom of White Rot. It has destroyed my whole crop of about 200 plants. I've said a bit more in a later topic "Garlic woes" having forgotten I started this thread.

@Applestar if you want to combine these into a single topic, please do.

[applestar]

OK, I will as soon as I remember how.

[Gary350]

I'm not sure what white rot on garlic is?

I think my garlic was ready to harvest weeks ago before they showed signs of being ready to harvest. The 2½" of rain we had a week ago is probably what made some of my garlic rot on the surface. The dry paper skin on the outside of garlic bulbs turned to a brown color mushy rot. I used high pressure water to spray most of that rot stuff away cloves under the rot are good.

[Vanisle_BC]

I'm not sure what white rot on garlic is?

https://plantclinic.cornell.edu/factsheets/garlicdiseases.pdf

You don't want it!