Garlic June 2008
Most of my hardneck varieties have formed scapes, in various stages of curling and uncurling.
A couple of the scapes have also started opening and forming bulbils. In the past I’ve removed most of my scapes to eat and in order to promote bulb growth. This year I’m going to let most of them form. Not only am I tired of eating garlic scapes, but I’ve started to learn that bulbils are really useful. It’s easier to send someone bulbils in the mail, and it’s safer to give bulbils to other gardeners when sharing garlic because you are less likely to spread disease that way.
I am also going to try prodding the garlic plants to make some seeds. I understand this can be done by plucking out the bulbils with tweezers, which will in turn cause the scape to bloom and try to produce seeds as sort of a survival mechanism. I am not expecting success the first year doing this, and I understand it’s a lot of work and takes a lot of patience I probably don’t have.
Garlic Rust has started to appear on the leaves, which is not very good news but was expected. It appeared on my garlic about the same time last year. Harvest is in about 7 weeks, so it’s just a matter of waiting and hoping it doesn’t get too bad.
This plant has it a little worse.
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10 Responses to “Garlic June 2008”
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I wonder if I should try to spray skimmed milk on my garlics, to try to prevent garlic rust this year. I have seen no sign of it yet, but guess it will be on its way. I intend to follow your example, trying to have some of the garlics develop seeds. Could be very interesting.
Interesting Patrick. Last weekend there were no scapes on mine – maybe some will have appeared this week. I’ll get down there this Saturday. Think I’ll remove most of them as I prefer the bulbs to develop. I’ll check for rust as well.
Søren, I recently came across something that said rust needs a humidity of at least 97% for 4+ hours to become established, but can’t become established on wet plants. If the humidity is high, you might try spraying your plants with water instead of skimmed milk.
Oh nemesis. Yesterday no rust, today the first little area with spots on a single leave. Did the first spray with skimmed milk today.
[...] går læste jeg om Patricks hvidløg der nu har fået hvidløgsrust. Der var ikke noget i mine hvidløg. Men i dag fandt jeg så det [...]
Thanks for the information on scapes (I googled and got your 2006 post on them). This is my first year for garlic, but no scapes have appeared yet in central NY. I think we’ll eat some and let some others grow to see the difference. I will look for rust!
Hi. Just found this site with a google for garlic rust, having just noticed my entire crop has turned orange in the last couple of days. :-<
Add to that all of my onions which went to seed last month, I’m not having a very alliumy year this year …
[...] rust is very much on my mind at the moment. Last year around this time it appeared on my garlic, and it just appeared on Gintoino’s garlic in [...]
We live by this creek and while we were exploring, we found cloves of garlic; like the first picture. we opened one and it definatly was garlic. we can use some tips on how to care for it. think you could help? thanks. Could you maybe make it in teenage language?
Also, we have many questions about it, so please repond asap.
-Monsters Group
Hello MG,
I can try to help. The first picture is of a scape, the top part of the plant. It would help if you have the bottom of the plant too.
If you have the whole plant, I suggest bringing it home and planting it in the ground there. Is this possible?