Garlic failure

[GIULIA]

Have many other people had to dig uup their garlic prematurely this year? On our allotments nearly everyone is having troubles, either rot or rust or something had caused it all to simply give up or turn slimy. I've rescued most of mine but there aren't many decent sized bulbs.

[Chantal]

I took all mine up at the weekend; the bulbs were arouind half the size they should be. The rust was terrible and from bitter experience I know that if I'd left them in with all this rain, they'd have started to rot in a week or so.

I was reading recently, that garlic needs lots and lots of water during March/April and then shouldn't be watered for 6 weeks before harvest; obviously you can't control rain. The weather this year was the reverse, with a totally dry April and very wet May.

[carlseawolf]

same here , they have all grown and produced a good size bulb but then have bolted and produced a seed head with the individual cloves starting to re- grow out of the big plant ( possible to much nitrogen ?)
can these cloves be re-planted again as they have there own separate roots ?

[retropants]

my early wight (with flower stems) was fine, and a good size, but I dug a couple of the later softneck variety last weekend, and they are rubbish, not bulbed up and quite, quite rotten.

[GIULIA]

I found the Purple Wight survived all the troubles better than the rest, the elephant garlic is still growing well and the Albigensian, planted farther down the plot under the globe artichokes, seems to have escaped. (I had one of those Isle of Wight mixed packs so it's interesting to compare performance, I would definitely have the purple again, last year's crop was fantastic.)

[Monika]

All our garlics are covered with rust, too. It's the first time we have ever had it on garlic, last year it appeared on leeks, though much less than this year's garlic. The bulbs seem to have bulbed up as normal, though. I just hope they keep well.

[Colin_M]

I'm half way through my harvest.

Like others, my Early Wight was fine and is sat drying in the shed (picked 2-3 weeks ago). A second batch of mixed varieties was picked last week & is drying fine, though not huge bulbs.

The remaining big bulbs are still in the ground . I guess I need to wait for this weekend's rain to clear before even attempting to pick them. I've tried dealing with wet picked garlic before and it's a smelly experience!

Finally, I had lots of rust (again) this year. It showed on nearly all my garlic. Other than spoiling their visual appearance, I'm not sure it's impacted the size or flavour of the bulbs. It seems a far worse pest on things like leeks, where you want some of the green leaves.

Here are the Early Wight (including rust!)


More pics here http://www.pbase.com/cmalsingh/2007

Colin

[Chantal]

Thanks Colin, that's cheered me up. My garlic looks a lot like that and I thought it was seriously undersized; I think I was being over optimistic.

Cheers

[Tigger]

I harvested mine last weekend and it should be dry enough to plait this week. It doesn't have any rust, but the bulbs are not huge. Mind you - it was only cloves from Lidl's finest!

It tastes fantastic.

[Colin_M]

My garlic looks a lot like that and I thought it was seriously undersized; I think I was being over optimistic

Whoops, I spoke too soon.

My remaining garlic had looked quite promising a few weeks back. Since then, it has become increasingly covered in rust and the outside leaves gone yellow & withered. The heavy rain stopped at the end of the week, so I harvested it today. What a disappointment

The bulbs are all pretty small (smaller than the Early Purple Wight above). Normally I would have left some of the varieties a little longer, but the plants genuinely looked like they were going into decline.


Colin

[retropants]

I really need to harvest the rest of mine too. The early stuff fared really well, and I'm very pleased, but the remaining plants, which shouldn't be ready yet, are almost dead, having had the worst rust I have ever seen, and with all this rain, it is all rotten, and hasn't bulbed up. I can't understad why, as both varieties were equally mollycoddled!

[Mike Vogel]

Well, Giulia, I think Chantal's absolutely right. I also had mine from The Garlic Farm and the cloves I planted last autumn were from those. I was also given 40 cloves of "a Chinese Garlic", which turned out to be Rocambole, an early variety.

Some of our Italians had already dug theirs up and chucked them as early as mid-May. The dry April and wet May is the wrong way round for garlic.

Well, my Rocambole, Early Purple and Thermidrome [from the OGC] were dug up in end May / early June and were about the right size, although a couple of the Thermidrome had soil clinging to the bulb, which had begun to go mouldy [Is this rust?]. I became afraid that the constant rain would rot the rest of the crop, so decided to dig them up early, as it's better too early than too late.

The Iberian Wight was good, but the Albigensian was very small, and I'd regard that as a failure, although the bulbs I have managed to salvage are perfectly usable. This afternoon I dug up the Solent Wight, which I would normally expect to dig in July. Their leaves were looking rust-spotted [Is this rust?]. They are OK, but, as for Chantal, a lot smaller than if i had left them in a normal year.

This left the elephant garlic, and I believe I could have left that alone for another couple of weeks with no ill effects. 3 are nice big bulbs, but the other 3 are not as big and quite round, as if they haven't separated yet. I suspect I'll find thay have though.

Incidentally, I planted the little bulblets which grew on the elephant garlic, but not a single one sprouted. Any tips there?

best wishes

mike

[Monika]

I am going to harvest my garlic Purple Wight and Thermidrome this weekend (weather permitting) because the leaves are covered in rust and quite yellow. The bulbs I have dug so far are o.k. for size, so that doesn't seem a problem. But in previous years I have always just left them in the ground until needed whereas now I will have about 50 garlic bulbs to keep for as long as possible. What's the best way to do so? We have a dry and quite cool garage where I could hang them up (that's where we keep the onions over winter) or should they be kept warm, say, in the unheated greenhouse? There is a limit of how much garlic two people can use in a short time!

[Mike Vogel]

From what I read, Monika, it is best to let them lie outside to dry [ha ha!] but not necessarily to cook i hot sunshine. Failing that, the Garlic Farm recommends hanging them up in bunches of 6 in a conservatory or glass house, or, better, placing them in wooden trays to dry evenly and at the same pace. In fine weather they will dry in a week to a point at which there is still a little moisture left in the centre of the stem. The idea is to get the leaves around the bulb and the stem dry but not brittle and then to hang them up or plait them artistically.

I just let mine dry and then cut off superfluous leaves and tie them up so that I can hang them inmy shed.

The different varieties keep for different lengths. I suspect that the early ones and the Thermidrome don't keep much beyond Nov/dec, but Printanor and the later ones will keep a lot longer. after all, those can be planted in march, so I'd expect them to keep till April or so.

Hood luck with the lifting

mike

[Chantal]

Mike, you may find your elephant garlic behaves differently to your regular garlic because it's not really garlic but a member of the leek family, or so I understand.