by Leslie Cox; Wednesday, July 20, 2016

It is hugely disappointing after spending the last ten months caring for your garlic crop, only to find some black ugly bulbs at harvest time. Really disappointing.

Thankfully, there were not many. Seven or eight out of eighty. But that is six or seven too many in my book.

Okay. So what happened? How come the bulbs are black and all mushy-soft?

Well…the good news is, it is not white rot. That is the really dreaded fungal disease we do not want anywhere near our garlic or onions. Once it comes into your garden, it can live in the soil for 20 to 30 years. Not good.

So, if given my choice…I guess having botrytis rot attack some of our garlic bulbs is really not quite so catastrophic.

The bad news is, it has likely been lying dormant in our soil…as most of these fungal diseases seem to…and the conditions were just right this year for it to hit on some of our garlic crop.

No way of firmly pinpointing which botrytis rot attacked our garlic and there are a few different species such as Botrytis allii, B. porri, and B. acclada. All of these are known to attack onions, garlic, and a few other members in the allium family.

I suspect the culprit is Botrytis porri but the only way to tell for sure is to have a lab verify through testing.

There is more good news though. We can still use our own stock for next year’s garlic crop. But we have to make sure each clove is thoroughly inspected before it gets planted.

Two things we will be doing differently come planting time in September…we will be planting the cloves in a new bed and we will be leaving more room between each clove.

As with all fungal diseases, the best way to avoid them is to practice crop rotation. This means moving each vegetable variety over one bed, or row, each year…and the goal is not to plant that variety in the bed it was first planted in for 4 to 5 years. (Crop rotation is also a good method of foiling insect pests too.)

Shame on us. We planted the garlic in the same spot we grew it in 2014 / 2015.

As for leaving more space between the cloves…this helps in air circulation. Humidity is lethal when it comes to fungi.

Shame on us for trying to cram too many garlic into the bed. We should either have cut back the number (heavens!), or made the bed bigger (much more sensible!).

Still more to come on this botrytis rot. I haven’t finished telling the whole story yet…and there is still the bit about garlic rust to come. Will also be posting some more photos.

Stay tuned!