We've been rather preoccupied here these past couple of weeks with our bee drama and rabbit harvest. I've been watering newly-seeded areas and trying to keep up with daily blueberry picking, and checking my barley and wheat crops to see if they're ready to harvest. Our garlic crop has been low on my list of priorities, having always been fairly low-maintenance and predictable - plant in October, and harvest in late July, repeat. When I noticed some of the leaves dying down, I assumed that harvest time was approaching. Going to pull the drip lines off of the beds, and lift a few bulbs to check on their progress, I saw discoloration on the garlic leaves.
After cutting off as many badly- infected leaves as possible, for careful removal and disposal in the garbage, I uprooted the bulbs with a garden fork, and left them exposed for a couple of hours to allow the dirt on the roots to dry out.
Some of our larger hard-neck bulbs were quite impressive this year. The biggest bulbs will be set aside for planting in October - our crop is about half-and-half soft and hard neck garlic.
Many of the soft-neck bulbs were still of a respectable size. It's hard to tell if the fungus affected the crop, since we have always had a rather variable harvest. There's no sign of rot or damage, and only a handful of the bulbs were disappointing. That's a relief, since we try very hard to produce enough garlic to see us through to the next year's harvest.
All 180+ bulbs were moved to a screen in the carport, out of the sun, and will cure there for 2 weeks while I carefully rotate them, removing the remaining dirt and dying leaves. I'll be putting the leaves in the garbage, despite having yard waste removal, because I don't want to allow the spores a chance to infest other plants through poorly finished city compost. Though my braids of soft-neck garlic bulbs were impressive last year, I will be clipping the stems of all the garlic plants for storage this year, so as not to risk contamination spread by handling the dried leaves. My scissors and pruners will be disinfected after each use.
My research shows that we can still use some of our current stock for planting out in October, which was an immediate concern for me. Unfortunately, the spores which affected this year's crop can remain dormant in the soil where the plants grew for years to come - and there, opinions varied widely (between 3 to 30 years).
We use crop rotation in the garden, so I can say with a certainty that these beds had never been used for garlic in the past five seasons. There may have been some onion crops in that time - who can truly practice a three to five year crop family rotation in a backyard garden?
This year's very wet Spring probably contributed to this problem, though I did not see any evidence of disease while gathering the last of the scapes just a few weeks ago.
Other important points to remember - this disease can overwinter in milder climates like southern BC, where chives and perennial onions may remain as permanent crops - spanning the seasons and not being rotated like an annual plant, these crops can serve as a host for future infection.
Air circulation and sun are important to reduce the spread of the fungus, which needs moisture to thrive. I was lax in removing weeds growing in the garlic patch, allowing self-seeded borage and sprouted grain seeds from my mulch of straw to stand between the garlic leaves. I will be more careful in the future.
The rabbit manure that I used to top-dress the beds may have contributed more nitrogen than needed, leaving the garlic with leaves more easily infected by the fungal disease. Composted mulch only on the garlic beds from now on.
I'll definitely be keeping a closer eye on this important crop in the years to come. We can't do without our garlic!
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