Kitchen Garden Forum

Leaves on the garlic were looking yellow - having been very healthy plants until recently. We pulled up one clove to see what it was like - it was mouldy, soft and didn't smell too good! Every plant turned out to be the same so we pulled them all up and burnt them. Is this just because of the weather?
Never had any trouble with garlic before and did not grow them in this bed last year.

Hi there Welsh gardener! Sorry to hear of your problems with garlic. I'm a first time grower -(of all sorts of things) and I have suffered badly with rust on my garlic. So, following advice I read, I dug up the affected plants and their neighbours only to find that the majority hadn't been growing very well and I have ended up with lots of 'banty-egg' size bulbs with the tiniest of cloves in each.
I did have the same trouble with some of the shallots though - wet, mouldy and rotten bulbs - but not with all of them. I'll ask around and see if any of our old-timers have any ideas and get back to you.
Sorry that you have had to wait so long for a reply - don't give up

if its any consolation, I'm having a lot of problems with rot on my shallots and red onions. Am assuming this is a general problem this year because of the wet weather...

Interesting how everyone's fared (there are lots of separate threads across the various forums here).
My experience has been:
Garlic - All got rust. Early Purple Wight produced good sized bulbs. All the rest produced small bulbs
Longor Shallots - Also getting quite rusty. Bulbs not very big yet, though plants don't look like they're thriving.
Banana Shallots - Those sown from seed look normal and are bulbing up. Those planted from bulbs have slight rust, otherwise seem to be thriving
Red Onions - No signs of rusts and have all produced good size bulbs.


Colin

My garlic has turned yellow with rust also. Is there any organic treatment for rust?

Can leeks get rust. As I'm writing I've realised that I've just planted my leeks in a bed which had garlic in last year (which died of rust) I was filling a gap where the potatoes had been, they all got attacked by blight.

My shallots are doing OK.

Helix

Apparently, rust which attacks garlic also attacks leeks but not onions, that's a different strain (or variety?). That would explain why my rust-covered garlic has infected the leeks planted on one side, albeit very slightly to date, but the onions on the other side are fine.

This year has been all wrong for garlic. Not a very cold winter, with few frosty nights. Then a warm dry April. Then wet wet wet. Garlic wants dry warm conditions for its last month or so.

I dug my Early Wight and Thermidrome just as the leaves had begun to turn yellowish. Some of the Thermidrome had withered and gone mouldy at the bulb, but most were OK and reasonably sized.

Then with more rain forecast I dug up everything else earlier than I normally would, mid-June. I was lucky. The Albigensian Wight was afailure, but the Iberian was well-sized. The Solent Wight, which had done well last year, was smaller. I think I was too early with the Elephant garlic, as only 2 of the 5 had swollen properly, although I think I'll get good cloves from the others.

So I've been lucky. I grew the garlic in raised beds on which a fair amount of ash had been incorporated from the various burnings of weeds, wood etc over the summer. I also used Chase organic fertiliser. I've no idea whether all this saved the crop, but I think one or two others around me also had a decent crop, although there were some who had prematurely trashed theirs.

I think garlic needs ash and good drainage, but especially a cold winter and a dry May.

Good luck

mike

Our garlic had rust (as I said above) and their foliage is now all dead, but the garlic bulbs are huge and healthy so far so the rust doesn't seem to have affected the parts underground.