Kitchen Garden Forum

Have just lifted my Ailsa Craig onions to find that about half of them have signs of what I assume to be white rot; in most cases fairly mild.
Does anyone know whether they are safe to eat if the affected areas are removed? And yes I know not to put the trimmings in the compost bin.
I believe that the soil can be treated with onion water to ‘fool’ the fungal spores into germinating to help remove the fungus from the ground. Has anyone tried this, and if so, when is the best time to treat the ground, and what sort of strength of solution is required; i.e. how many onions to how much water? Just steeped cold or boiled, etc.?
Any advice to try to reduce the problem gratefully received.

Oh-hell Fred, I didn't realise this white rot was so serious.

I lost quite a few onions and some garlic to what I assume was this rot, I just binned the rotten ones and any soft ones segregating them as quickly as possible and the remaining crop is fine.

I have to share a little new experience though.

I noticed this horrible smell in my shed/outbuilding, it got worse-and-worse until I started thinking a rat might have got in and died but my shed is built like a house, it's a proper domestic building with vermin proof eves and auto-closing door.

The smell came from a single rotten red onion that I had missed, the smell was dreadful.

There was some discussion of "garlic solution" elsewhere on the forum with reference to some published American research. Can't remember where.

I found an RHS explanation.

http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/pro ... px?pid=226

I won't grow any alliums in that raised bed, the soil for all my raised beds came from the same source which is possibly the source of the fungus. In-fact, all my raised beds have some soil from the same source which probably means I won't be able to grow alliums in them.

Bummer.

peter wrote:There was some discussion of "garlic solution" elsewhere on the forum with reference to some published American research. Can't remember where.

Search for the keywords "Fred Crowe" and "Oregon", you should find a summary.