Northern Hemisphere Garlic Ranchers/2024 Crop

[crunch1224]

I pickle some of my scapes and man they are delicious. As for the rest I use them in stir fry, omelets, green bean casserole, salads, ect.

[JRinPA]

Just singin' in the rain..

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[Whwoz]

I pickle some of my scapes and man they are delicious. As for the rest I use them in stir fry, omelets, green bean casserole, salads, ect.

How do you pickle your scapes? Any special spice blend or technique used Crunch1224

[JRinPA]

Yes pickled scapes! @crunch1224

[svalli]

I love pickled garlic scapes. It is great way to use them. Also a spicy relish made from the minced scapes is good.

Last year I crushed scapes and lovage with sea salt and spread the mush on a parchment paper. After dehydrating I powdered it in the blender to make my own seasoned salt.

This thread has some links to recipes.
viewtopic.php?p=71627&hilit=scapes#p71627

[JRinPA]

My long row was still pretty weed free, but the edge weeds were starting to creep on the row. So I cut them back today with a colinear hoe, and then covered that long row with shredded leaf mulch. I may have changed my mind about transplanting okra into that bed, as I think I don't want to compromise the okra at all this year. They may well get their own row. I still think it would work.

[bower]

Snowbanks are receding off the beds here, and so far there's no sign that voles decided to tunnel into them over winter. Best news I could hope for, and garlic sprouts should be up in a week or two.

[crunch1224]

I pickle some of my scapes and man they are delicious. As for the rest I use them in stir fry, omelets, green bean casserole, salads, ect.

How do you pickle your scapes? Any special spice blend or technique used Crunch1224

I'm partial to my dill recipe. 50/50 mix 5% vinegar to water, sugar not a lot, salt, McCormic pickle spice, crushed red pepper, pickle crisp, some sliced onions, some grape leaves if I have them, a dill head per jar. I might have to use dill seed this year because im starting a new patch of dill. Thats about it for the recipe nothing special.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Garlic's coming along extra primo good, this weekend's rain ain't gonna hurt:

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The Gotch

[crunch1224]

Garlic's coming along extra primo good, this weekend's rain ain't gonna hurt:
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The Gotch

The Garlics looking great there Gotch. What types did you grow?

[JRinPA]

I was looking at mine today, trying to find damage from that leaf miner. If I see the damage, make sense to just break the leaf off below the damage? It would be worth an hour, a couple times. But I couldn't really tell if I saw any. There are some older leaves that have a spot and then it folds over there, and looks kind of yellow tipped. But they are the oldest leaves that would have seen freezes.

[bower]

@JRinPA yellow tips are probably just frost damage. I think the miner damage has to look different - like little lines inside the green leaf.

My garlic is up, and first time ever, three beds of main crop without a single missed!
As I noticed last year, the Marbled Purple Stripes are way ahead of the Porcelains and first to break ground.
The last bed, with smaller cloves still growing up, was also last to lose its snow, but they are coming on now and starting to look like not many misses - except for the creole Lautrec. Hopefully they're just late.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

The Garlics looking great there Gotch. What types did you grow?

Wish I could tell you's, I'm too unsophisticated, Garlic-wise, to say; all hard neck, though.

The Gotch

[JRinPA]

definitely a lot of allium miner. Not those leaves I could see yesterday evening, but clear in bright afternoon light, lots of them. Got pic of one sticking in eggs.

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[JRinPA]

What I can't figure is, if the larvae burrows down the leaf, then pupates in the leaf. And I pull the garlic in July. And cut the leaf off after curing, and discard/burn. How doe that affect my bulb? How would that rot the cloves?
The penn state stuff always says it ends at the pupa stage. I have seen plenty of those, halfway down the leaf. So if they end up there, and there is no channel down the the bulb between there and the cloves....why does it rot the garlic during storage?

Frankly I don't believe they know what they are talking about.

[Seven Bends]

I can say from sad experience that the bulbs definitely rot from allium leaf miner damage. I've given up growing garlic because of it. Here's the explanation from Cornell about why the damage occurs:

Larvae start feeding at the tops of plants and migrate toward the base to pupate. The larvae can destroy vascular tissue, which can lead to bacterial or fungal infections that cause rot.

Here's how the University of Delaware explains it:
When eggs hatch the larvae at first mine leaves and then move down to the bulbs and leaf sheathes where they feed and eventually pupate. The feeding damage can open up the foliage and bulb to fungal infections.

Apparently spraying with spinosad on a regular schedule after the ovipositor marks appear on the leaves will provide good control. Spinosad is OMRI-listed. And the best bet is prevention by using row cover during the adult flights (late March to May & again September to frost), and crop rotation.

[JRinPA]

So if I break off the leaves below the eggs, is that also laying open "the foliage and bulb to fungal infections"? If that will work, I can put the time in, much better than spraying anything at a comm garden. I use BT but that is about it.

I think the larvae make it right down to the cloves, and those are the ones that rot. Whereas PSU is saying they stop and pupate above the bulb, then hatch out, without an actual path to bulb. And I don't think that would rot the bulb, since there is no direct connection/damage.

Basically I have seen the pupa casing before, but there are way more eggs at this point in late April than I have ever seen pupa casings at harvest.

Row covers would only work with a crop rotation I think...the April flies are coming from the ground of last crop? And even then, the leaves can't touch the cloth, or, presumbably, the fly oviposit right through the cloth.

I had a lot of onions rot last year, that I didn't think I cured and stored THAT poorly, and I think these flies did that too. Brownrexx said she stopped growing onions, maybe 3-4 years back due to these things.

I guess I can look into spinosad but...really aggravating. This did not have to happen....3000 miles of ocean was nice fat buffer. It is pretty strange that anyone would need special onions or garlic in Lancaster PA, as good as the soil and climate is there. Who benefited from this bug being let loose here?

[Seven Bends]

The last year I grew garlic, I cut off all the leaves that had visible ovipositor marks as soon as I noticed them. It didn't work. I still lost nearly 2/3 of my crop to splitting and rot. Go ahead and try it, but don't expect much. I don't know whether cutting off the leaves could make the problem worse by increasing the opportunity for fungal and bacterial infections to attack the plants. That's a good question; haven't seen it addressed anywhere.

It doesn't matter whether the lavae get down to the bulb to pupate. Once they chew on the leaf or stem, it introduces the bacterial and fungal infections. Those infections can travel down the plant to the bulb, even if the larvae don''t. And despite what PSU apparently said, I definitely found pupae in the bulbs themselves. The more pupae and the further down the plant they had traveled, the more damage to the bulb. Something about them or the disease they introduce seems to cause the bulb wrappers to split, too.

Yes, if you're going to try row cover as prevention, you have to rotate to a new location. And you have to cover in both spring and fall. I expect you're right that row cover touching the leaves wouldn't help much.

I'm getting allium leaf miner in my onions also. The first year, I lost my whole crop -- weird twisted leaves, no growth, then slimy rotting before most of the bulbs ever formed. Last year I only lost maybe 1/5 of my onions, maybe because I planted them very late (after the flight was mostly over, I think). That meant smaller onions, but at least I got some.

Spinosad is OMRI-listed (organic approved) but it is very toxic to bees for a few hours until it dries, so you should only spray it when bees aren't active (late evening is best). Also moderately toxic to earthworms and presumably would be as toxic to beneficial insects as to the bad ones. I decided I didn't want to mess with it.

Robust global free trade definitely has drawbacks. Lots of ink has been spilled and lots of breath spent on speeches about who benefits. I know that onions, garlic, chestnut trees, ash trees, and hemlocks didn't benefit. Some occupations and towns didn't fare too well, either. Others did.

[JRinPA]

This a real serious problem, these leaf miners.

I will have to make a solid plan/layout for garlic and onions for next year and beyond.

My onion starts that went into the comm garden a few weeks back are showing the miner infestation as well. My bottle onion seed bulbs in pots at home do not have it. Maybe I can cover them for a month with an AG19...pillowcase? I just transplanted bottle onion starts and sets about a week back, in the backyard 20 ft raised bed. I doubt they are touched yet, just tiny starts that were few and late. But if they are touched I will pull them, no question. Just difficult for me to cover it, it is 4 ft across. Much easier for me to cover a 2 ft wide planting than a 4 ft.

I never saw these miners in the garlic at home (if I did I didn't recognize them) but it has been probably 4-5 years since I grew a full crop here. I have the original stock scattered around, will have to check that, never noted any miner damage here at all. I started noticing at the comm garden in July 2020. Pupa casings in the garlic, right about ground level or a little above. Where it starts to go white. Comm gardeners have planted onions there every year for years, so it may have reached there 8 years back for all I know. I just started growing onions last year. 2020 was my first big garlic year at the comm garden; I found it gets bigger over there with the extra sun. But I have pics from July 2020 harvest and can see the pupa in some stripped stalks. I think I had garlic over there as early as 2018 spring planted cloves. Whereas this garlic has been at the house since at least the 1960s.

I will need to set a rotation between a home onion/garlic plot that gets covered with fresh cover cloth each season, and then some comm garden beds for alternate years to get covered that season but won't have the bugs in the soil from the year before... Incredibly limiting and extra work and money. I like to intercrop onions and garlic in spots, but I guess that is completely out of the question, now.

I have one bed of sets I just put in, I guess I can cover them up...planted too wide a row to do it with 7ft wide cloth, though. And the hot peppers were supposed to go in there in a few weeks.

Is a permanent garlic/onion bed possible? Rather than rotation? It might be easier to devote a single area for garlic and storage onions, and keep that covered under cloth when the bugs are active. Use that every year. And could use spinosad, I guess.

And then still be able to grow summer/fresh onions at the comm garden without covering, like everyone else.

This is all just so unnecessary, it is disheartening.

[JRinPA]

Well...all of the garlic walking around the house now seems to be infested with the miners as well. 60 years of customizing itself to this area, walking and growing.

A few years to ruin it because some rich greedy wanted either to import something "better" to make themselves even richer, or, some other rich greedy greedy purposefully introduced it here to ruin the crop here so as to supply from elsewhere. As always, only two choices when something wrong happens, either it was from being ignorant, or it was from doing it on purpose. For the effect, it really doesn't matter.

This world is becoming very sickening to contemplate.