Onion rot

Hi

Last year everybody on our allotment site lost there oinons with some sort of onion blight or rot,

to day i was weeding my winter onions and pulled a few small onions up and i noticed that each one had some white fugus around the root area do you think that this could be onion rot or blight once more thanks for reading this

regards Dave Hoskins

 

Hi Holttum,

Onions wilting, yellowing, drooping, failing to thrive, pull from the soil very easily, feeble roots, white fungus around the root plate? That would be white rot aka mouldy nose. Darn nuisance it is too. As I understand, the only cure is to avoid infected soil.

On the bright side, I get the impression that in organically busy soil, it clears much quicker than the intensive pundits would have you believe.

Yes? No?

 

Hi Manteur

thanks for your reply you have discribed it completly and i have just been looking on the internet and it does not look good but one must have your type of outlook and hope,

one thing i am doing is to use solar power to cook a strip of my allotment mainly to get rid of certain weeds that have taken up residence but this may also do some good in this type of fungus they say that every thing apart from nutriants are killed off to a depth of 18 inches if you leave it covered for a year so far it has behaved like a super greenhouse and everybody is asking why im have gone into cultivating weeds for the plastic has risen about 2 foot so far,we shall see

thanks for your information once you know what one is dealing with it helps,i have already started some raised beds and i have brought a steralizer to combat carrot and turnip fly and using some special netting is it gromex or something like that

this is my forth year and each year there has been some major problem like tomato blight,late frost,and amazing event last year when everybodys winter onions where pulled up or eaten or the leaf where bitten off and we where told we must have had a massive attach by crows would you belive which i do as a lot of the onions looked like cups where all the inside was eaten and only the outside skin was left the expert said that the winter onions where much more sweeter then the summer ones which is why the crows eat them,but there must have been alot of them as the amount of damaged that was done

regards Holttum

 

Dave - raised beds will not help against carrot or turnip fly. You need to cover the crop with fleece or enviromesh to prevent the fly landing and laying eggs.
It will be really interesting to see if your solar sterilisation works on your onion white rot. I tried all sorts of methods of sterilisation, but none worked so this year I'm trying growing a few onions in big boxes of bought compost. Hope you'll post later in the year and let us know the results.