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True Garlic Seeds

garlic_seeds

Dr. Ivan Buddenhagen just sent me the 4 bulbs of garlic and the 121 seeds you see in the picture above.  I’m really excited about this.  He’s been working for years developing garlic varieties that produce real seed — without human intervention!

Collecting real seeds from garlic plants has always been theoretically possible, but a lot of work.  It’s always been a lot more practical to just grow garlic from cloves, with the resulting plant being a genetic clone of it’s parent.  In fact, this is how we’ve been growing garlic for centuries, meaning the plants have more or less ‘forgotten’, through evolution, how to produce seeds.  Dr. Buddenhagen has succeeded in bringing back this trait, meaning it’s now possible and practical to breed new garlic varieties.  In the picture above, you see 4 of his new varieties.

In my case, here in western Europe, garlic rust is a serious problem.  Together with others, I’ve been looking for years for a resistant variety.  This sheds a whole new light on this search effort.  Now, hopefully, I can work with a population of garlic plants exchanging DNA and reproducing sexually.  I understand these plants need a long season to develop seeds, and of course the rust may still kill my plants before I have a chance to gather seed, but now there’s hope…

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Garlic Rust in Iran

Last week Arash in Iran left the following comment:

Hello to all
I am a researcher in iran.I and my cooperator have collected 22 accessions from region of Tarom (one of areas of Zanjan province). We want to research taht how many genotypes are being farm in this area and also study resistance to puccinia alli. please gide me how I operate thate conclude best.

on this post.

He actually doesn’t say it’s specifically on garlic, rather alliums in general, but since my original post was on garlic I assume that’s what he meant.

Does anyone have any information for him?

I can say that in the last few years since I’ve been making posts about garlic rust, I first read that it was present in on the US west coast, specifically in California in the region around Gilroy and a few isolated places in Oregon.  I also knew it was present in northern Europe because it was in my garden and those of fellow gardeners in the UK, Denmark and Sweden.

In the years that followed I had reports from readers that it was present in the entire Willamette Valley area of Oregon, and later British Columbia in Canada and Los Angeles, in southern California.  Two years ago someone reported it appeared in Ethiopia.  I see mentioned on the Internet it’s also appeared this year on the east coast of the US in Maine.  It seems to be spreading now, almost all over the world.

Following a suggestion from Søren, a fellow blogger in Denmark I’ve been experimenting with spraying dilute milk on my plants.  I have not done this in any sort of scientific way, but my feeling is it’s of significant benefit.  It seems to slow the rust down and manage it, to the extent it’s no longer a serious problem.  I spray this on the plants about once a week or after rain, during the last 2-3 months or when I think rust infection is likely to occur.  It’s benefit seems to be much greater if applied before the plants are infected.  I use a ratio of 3-10 parts water to one part milk.

In the last several years I have grown more than 120 varieties of garlic in my garden, and a friend of mine more than 300.  We have not really noticed significant signs of resistance to garlic rust on any of them, except a few of the more vigorous varieties like Susan Delafield and Estonian Red (a purple stripe type) seem to stand up a little longer to the rust probably because of the strength of the plants, and some silverskin varieties like Chilean Silver seemed to get infected a little later than the others.

The other thing a number of people observed was the application of high nitrogen fertilizer, in particular animal manure, caused the rust problem to become much worse.

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Garlic, Oxford and Next Year

Julieanne, who helped me organize the event last year in Oxford where Tom Wagner spoke, just made a post about growing the garlic I gave her last year.  Wow!  It all looks great, and I’m really happy it’s being grown in Oxford and shared with others there.  She’s posted some pictures and notes here as well.

Alas I didn’t have time to organize an event in the UK this year, but maybe next year.  If anyone has any ideas for speakers or anything else related to an event in 2011, please let me know, either in a comment here or private email.

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Black Alder and Companion Planting

I’ve posted before about my black alder trees.  I’m really pleased with them, and I thought it was time for an update.  They are now almost 2 years old, and I think I’m just really starting to see some of the benefits.

They are nitrogen fixing trees, meaning they put nitrogen into the ground as they grow.  Many gardeners plant beans or peas for this reason, but the difference with a nitrogen fixing tree is it is perennial so it keeps growing and it’s also large and deep rooted, so it fixes a lot of nitrogen deep into the ground.  Black alders are also a native species for me, which is an important reason why I choose it and like it.  Now that I know what I’m looking for, I see them in a lot of wild places.

It’s a tree, which means if you let it grow it will get huge.  I don’t do that.  As well as getting big, it doesn’t mind being severely cut back.  Whenever I think it’s getting on the large side or it’s in the way, I just whack off as much as I want and it cheerfully grows back.  About the size you see in this picture is what I generally find best, a slightly overgrown stump.

By cutting it back, it also helps it release it’s nitrogen into the ground.  By cutting leaves and branches off the top, it causes some of it’s roots to die and rot, and so release nitrogen.  Also, by cutting the tree back around the time it’s trying to produce seeds, it prevents it from putting resources into producing seeds and so consuming some of the nitrogen it already fixed.  It also keeps it from producing too many weeds.

By now a number of these trees are becoming well established, and they are making a noticeable difference to their surroundings.  At the beginning they caused a bit of a weed problem, because they were fixing nitrogen close to the surface.  As they became established, they fix nitrogen much deeper, meaning there was no immediate weed problem and the overall improvement in soil health of the area meant fewer weeds in general.  I would say however the benefits of the trees are not seen much beyond a meter or 2 from the tree itself.

One of the things I decided to experiment with was companion planting my garlic with some black alder trees.  I had little choice in fact, because the trees were established were it was time to rotate the garlic crop too.  Rather than removing the trees, I decided to see how it went.

Normally garlic, and alliums in general, are considered companion ‘enemies’  to nitrogen fixing plants.  They tend to stunt one another’s growth.  What I found was quite the opposite.  I couldn’t really say if the alder’s growth was stunted, as they grow pretty fast regardless, but the garlic planted near the trees developed quite large and healthy bulbs.  I guess because the roots of the alder are so deep, there’s little or no conflict between the plants.

I’m so happy with the alders in fact, this winter I’m going to try to buy some more.  I found them before on a local EBay equivalent for €1 per tree, and I’m going to see if I can find the same thing again.  I guess I have 20 or so trees, and I would like to double that number.  In particular, I would like to plant new trees in poorer parts of my garden, and perhaps remove some of the larger trees that are getting a little in the way by now and aren’t needed any more.

If you want to try something similar in your garden, I suggest looking for a native species that fixes nitrogen.  There are quite a number of possibilities.  By getting a native species, you know the plant will grow and thrive but at the same time not naturalize and turn into an invasive weed.  In some climates, the black alder is considered invasive.

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Mystery Garlic

I’ve been exchanging emails with Barrett, a reader and fellow garlic grower, and he’s come across an interesting garlic and is wondering if any of you out there have any more information about it for him.

Here are some excerpts (with permission) from his emails:

Thanks for offering to help. I appreciate the difficulty in trying
to determine a garlic variety in this way. On my own, I could possibly hope to narrow to Rocambole vs. Purple Stripe classification. I’m hoping to be able, with your help, to possibly narrow further. I’ve also read the Volk paper, so I understand those classifications are not perfect. A short list of possibilities is probably the best I can hope for. Ideally, I might be able to learn more about the actual origins of this particular cultivar.

I ordered the the garlic, called “H&A” by the seller (Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds) and the description only listed as “rare hardneck”. I contacted Baker Creek for more information, but the grower Merlyn Neidens had passed away, so no further inquiries could be made.

So that is the history. The bulbs I received were medium to extra large. This was my first year harvest, so I only got medium to large bulbs. The bulbs I planted had silvery white wrappers, which tan to brown clove wrappers (to the best of my recall). At the time, I guessed it was a rocambole variety.

After growing however, I’m more inclined to believe PS, possibly marbled subgroup (see photos). The scapes typically did a 270 degree curl, though a couple had the rocambole style double loop. The bulbs had characteristic purple stripes initially. One bulb that I peeled fresh seemed to develop more purple coloration as it cured in my kitchen. The other bulbs when cured tended more toward silvery to white outer wrappers with some purple showing through.

The clove wrapper on many cloves is incomplete/split, as seen in the open bulb photo. The bulbils are still maturing, but look largish and few (approx 15-20 at a guess) from what I’ve read, this indicates a leaning toward rocambole again, but doesn’t rule out PS. There is only a single layer of cloves, 8-10 per bulb, but that doesn’t really help much.

Photo link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/bgreyt/Garlic?authkey=Gv1sRgCKia0MeP2punKg&feat=directlink

I suggested to him that it seemed like it may be a creole type, mostly because of it’s color and clove shape, and I also found a reference to it on the Internet with this link:

http://rpagarlic.blogspot.com/2008/07/2008-garlic-crop-is-harvested.html

This was his reply:

So, I have an update on tracking down H&A origins. Turns out the link you found was the source for Merlyn. So I can trace mine to them. They say they got it from a place called Dakota Garlic, which appears to be defunct. I’m trying to get in touch with the former owner to see if he can tell me where he got it (and so on).

So, does anyone have any more information or ideas about this garlic?