Kitchen Garden Forum

Not 'garlic confusion' for me, but our overwintering garlic is huge but is badly affected by rust this year. Should I dig them out now and dry them off although the foliage is not dying back yet?
We usually get a bit of rust on leeks but have never had it as bad on garlic.

Monica mine are the same, but they are not ready, just starting to clove up. I am just going to leave them & keep my fingers crossed but have noted the papery skins are forming so can peel some of these layers off if they get a bit of rust & don't need the stems as don't plait them, just store in net bags.

Westi

After posting my query, I did a bit surfing on the net and it appears the best thing is to leave rust-affected garlic until they are ready to harvest. So I have picked one (and it is already almost golfball size) and will use it tomorrow and then decide what to do with the rest.

I planted a few different varieties of over wintered garlic last year. Just dug up the first row which I feared had rotted, but all good. Huge bulbs but had rusted and not nice enough stems to plait which I normally would. Going to have to look for a different method to string them up. Maybe a spike?

The other two varieties have rust but still have growth. I dug one up to check - still very small and not ready to harvest. I'll leave them to it and not worry about rust as I've found it doesn't effect flavour. I fear the biggest risk is rot what with the variable weather.

Maybe a feed? I know people use special (and expensive) onion feed, but would something like a tomato feed work?

Oh and sorry Dan - blame tiredness!

Pawty

Just dug up my Elephant garlic. Don't know if it is Beginners Luck but it makes up somewhat for the complete Wipe Out of the ordinary variety. I have garnered lots of little bulbils from them and potted them up to see what becomes of them, if anything, although I envisage it would be some considerable time before they are big enough to be capable of becoming new "planting bulbs"

Should I have cut the stalks off? They were very tall and had all gone to seed with thick stems so take up a lot of unnecessary drying space