Garlic Rust

Hello all.

A few weeks back I was about to harvest my garlic but noticed the first bulb was rather small. I decided to leave the rest a few more weeks. Just presumed I'd been a little premature.

Had a closer luck today & noticed they all have garlic rust (sorry, no pics but an image search on tinterbob will satisfy any curiosity). They've all been pulled & chucked, as there was nothing worth saving. Quite disappointed as they obviously take a while to grow & would've kept me in garlic for months! Also it was only my second year growing garlic & last year was a great success.

I suppose these things happen & touch wood my onions don't appear to be affected (can also spread to all alliums I believe ...)

So, newbies - keep a look out for garlic rust. We've had a humid wet summer so- far which apparently is ideal conditions.

Has anyone else suffered?


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I wouldn't harvest garlic until the top growth was dead anyway.

Was it sown last year, if so, I'd have thought there would at least be something to harvest by now.
Mine always seems to die through the summer, but some I left in situ last year went on to grow some very large corms this year.

 

My garlic had a touch of it a couple of years ago when the cold wet grey spring lasted right into summer, but some years ago it affected them so badly it totally destroyed the plants above and below ground. I make sure my garlic beds are away from shade, periodically check for rust and if I see any spray with a Listerine/Cooking Oil/Baking Soda/Washing Up Liquid mixture.

 

Hi Pete & Scrungee

I usually wait until approx first 4-5 leaves start dying, then pull. The bulbs were very small, and cloves not even formed properly. They were planted in the spring. Casablanca. Last year (the successful batch) were Early Purple Wight.

Thanks for the info Scrungee ... I gather that's optional liquids (I.e whichever one you have) and not a mix?


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I have endemic garlic/leek rust but it while unsightly I still get reasonable crops. I plant mine autumn and I grow a hardneck and a softneck variety. The hardneck variety sprouts soon after planting and produces large bulbs with fat cloves but does not store as well. The softneck often doesn't appear until well into spring and produces much smaller bulbs that store well with out sprouting. I harvest both types when the top growth dies off.

 

It's a mix of all of them. I mix the amount of Listerine/Cooking Oil/Washing Up Liquid required for size of sprayer I'm using together with a small amount of water and add the Baking Soda with the rest of the water just before spraying. I've only used it a couple of times but didn't have the rust completely destroy my crop as previously happened.

 

Mine had rust,i pulled them up today as they had fell over,the bulbs look ok ive left them to dry off and will check them tomo

 

My leeks and garlic tend to suffer from rust badly. Never worked out what I could do about it apart from taking off badly effected leaves without the plants get stripped.

A few years ago I sprayed against powdery mildew on courgette plant with baking soda water and got only limited results. Maybe your mixture will be more effective for both rust and powdery mildrew.

Please, Scrungee, If I want to make up 1litre solution, how many ml Listerine/ oil/ washing up liquid and tsp baking soda should be used?

 

I seem to recall 'Daitheplant' suggesting vaseline?

 

My cloves have seperated on somebut look tastey

 

Rubbing it on must be a bit time consuming.

 

This is taken from the Thompson & Morgan website. It's about leeks, however I think leek rust, garlic rust etc is all similar in regard to alliums.

'Plant hygiene is the key. Destroy any infected plant debris and burn it or remove it from the site - don’t put it in the compost heap. Try to practice crop rotation on your plot and choose rust resistant leek varieties. Increase the spacing between plants and make sure that there is good drainage to improve ventilation and reduce humidity. Avoid using too much high nitrogen fertiliser as nitrate rich soil causes lots of lush growth which is particularly susceptible to rust. Potassium rich fertilisers Chempak[emoji768] High Potash Feed - Formula 4 will help to counter this problem. Finally, keep an eye out for early signs of infection and as soon as they appear. An old exhibitors trick is to smear Vaseline on the infected areas. This will seal the spores in and prevent them from spreading to the rest of your crop.'

 

@HsuH I don't have the recipe to hand at the moment (somewhere on an external hard drive). What I did was look at all several of the recipes on the web, put them into a spreadsheet, calculate the rate/litre of all the ingredients and adjust them to come up with nice & easy to prepare quanties, so something like 1 teaspoon of A, + 1 tablespoon B, etc. would make X litres.

From looking at some web pages again I've realised it also had vinegar in it and also remembered that quantities differed from one link to another so I used whatever whole (teaspoon/tablespoon) measure that fitted all of them best. If I can't find my calcs I'll re-do them. It may not be a wonderfull cure-all, but I after using it I never had rust continue to get so bad that it destroyed the entire crop.

 

Aha!