Kitchen Garden Forum

Here in Bristol, we had a bit of rain towards the end of March, but not much since. Coupled with some warmth a few weeks back, the ground on our allotment is pretty dry and now showing signs of cracking.

My garlic had been growing quite well over the winter but I noticed some of the leaves were starting to turn yellow at the end and looked slightly wilted.

If you are growing garlic and lucky enough to have avoided much rain, your bulbs will benefit from some watering now. I have read more than once that the period from March-April is crucial for good bulb development and a dry spell now can reduce the yield you get, including the size of the bulbs.

Thanks Colin, I am off to water mine now

One other point is that garlic loves the P and K parts of fertilizer and again an absence of it in the Spring can result in small then average bulbs or ones with less of the lovely ooomph in their flavour.

Bonemeal is an ideal source but should probably have been raked into the soil (though may still havetime for late maturing varieties). However an easy alternative is tomato feed.

Once watered (as per above) one or two feeds over the rest of April may help. If you want to evaluate this, why not just try it on half your crop (or leave out one row) to see if it's actually making a difference?

Wood ash is another great food for garlic, but it's best appplied in feb, though better late than never.

Hi folks. Interesting reading. I'd assumed that garlic was a bit like onions, and as mine were showing the same symptoms (yellowing leaves), I've just this minute gave them a nitrogen feed...oops . Ah well, live and learn eh ?

Cheers...freddy.

Hi Freddy,
Onions like everything else appreciate Nitrogen just so long as you used a balanced fertilizer with approximate ratios to P and K.
I have always found that seedlings watered with a very diluted solution of balanced fertilizer thrive. From now on any fertilizer used should be high in P and K but they will still have a low Nitrogen count.
JB.

Hi,
This year I have decided to water early on with seaweed solution and then later to use my own comfrey tea instead of commercial tomato feed. Hopefully I will get better results since I find it too easy to leave the tomato feed in the greenhouse and just think of it for tomatoes!

Hilary

Hilary can't remember where I saw it but a research study said comfrey performs better than proprietry fertilisers the study was on potatoes. My comfrey is growing well will harvest and soak some this week.

Hi johnboy. Thanks for the info. The stuff I used was 'Chempak', which had ratios of 25:15:15. I spoke to a fellow today who said that yellowing of the outer leaves was quite normal. Not sure I go along with that, but I DO seem to remember that last years crop yellowed a bit, but I put that down to less than perfect conditions (whatever they might be )

Cheers...freddy.

Hi Freddy, although the outer leaves of garlic do start to go yellow as they approach maturity, I'd have thought this would be on the early side for many varieties at the moment.

If the bulbs aren't starting to show clearly through the soil, I'd say yellowing means they're pining for something (and I'm sure some sunshine wouldn't go amiss too).

Colin_M wrote:Hi Freddy, although the outer leaves of garlic do start to go yellow as they approach maturity, I'd have thought this would be on the early side for many varieties at the moment.

If the bulbs aren't starting to show clearly through the soil, I'd say yellowing means they're pining for something (and I'm sure some sunshine wouldn't go amiss too).

I tend to agree.
Another fellow told me that garlic wasn't too fussy about it's growing conditions, saying that it will grow in most soil types (mine is acidic). I don't expect to actually see my garlic until I dig it up, having planted it around an inch or two deep (maybe this was a mistake ?). Anyway, I've done the same as I did last year, and I had a pretty good crop, which I'm still using now. Maybe someone can tell me what conditions really favour garlic ?

Cheers...freddy.

Hello Freddy
When I get this yellowing of leaf tips on onions and garlic during their growth stage I give them a good watering with a solution of Epsom salts (available in most garden centres) and this soon cures the problem. It provides a quick boost of magnesium which is likely to be the main cause of this problem.

John

Whilst googling around on this subject, I came across the following pictures. Guess we've got a bit to go before we reach these scales of production (imagine the aroma around this lorry!)Garlic harvest

Wonder how many bulbs got crushed by the bloke stood on them packing the higher layers.