Garlic bed are subject to many potential problem , and spring up garlic could be a modified opportunity for each farm . If land has see disease or plague problems , farmers might not be able to plant garlic until after several decades of crop rotation . If either livid rot or roundworm have get serious problems with a crop , those field are normally best left to non - allium crop .
1. White Rot
The most problematical disease of the garlic industry is whitened rot ( Sclerotium cepivorum ) . This fungous disease strikes all allium crops , includingonionsand Allium sativum . The leaves of white - rot - infected garlic plant scandalmongering , give-up the ghost back partly and wilt . The roots also rot , allow infested plants to be uprooted easily . In the soil , a white fungal mycelium develops and then produces a identification number of round black sclerotia , the size of pinheads . It is typical to see the developing of whitened rot from mid - time of year to harvest .
White moulder sclerotia can lie in dormant in filth for 20 to 40 years , waiting to discover the scent of a growing allium root to break their dormancy . These Sclerotium are not winding or water supply borne , but are most frequently relocated by Farmer moving onion , garlic or contaminate filth or tool .
minuscule grower can quash major trouble and keep the bloodless molder under control condition by constantly looking out for and pulling any morbid plants that appear in their fields . Disease garlic plant have wilt and will ordinarily be in sporatic group of a few plants .
“ Very careful review in the former stages of plague is an efficacious control practice , but it will probably need to be keep evermore , ” explains Crowe . “ Once populations have built to moderate or high levels , white rot is nearly impossible to check . ”
Of course , strict sanitization and using disease - free planting material is also primal . Some growers further battle white molder by applying garlic - scented materials to the unplanted field . These odiferous treatments cause dormant sclerotium to come out and then die when they find no plants to infect , but this intervention only work on playing area that have not had an genus Allium craw imbed on them for at least six months . Crowe urge using a mix made from the succus of 10 pungent onion for every 50 Imperial gallon of grunge drench ( a pesticide treatment ) , and encourages two or three applications before the field is replant to garlic or other alliums again .
2. Nematodes
The second smutty and sure the sneakiest of garlic trouble is the stem and bulb nematodeDitylenchus dipsaci . This microscopic ( adults are 0.9 to 1.8 mm long ) , wormlike animate being is endoparasitic , entail it lives inside its host . The nematode life-time and reproduces inside garlic plants , eating part of the stem turn , leaves and bulbs . It is capable of endure without water and can survive for several old age in the surrounding dirt . Sometimes the growth of the garlic flora is not affected significantly , but the bulb timbre is reduced due to tissue breakdown , distortion or discolouration .
The filthy part of garlic nematodes is that the population of this pest ordinarily build up up for several seasons without seeable damage . Healthy garlic plants can tolerate jolly large densities of these nematodes without a significant drop in production , then all at once , population can reach a storey in which the entire crop can be put down in a single twelvemonth .
drive fair planting material is the first whole step in the fight against nematode worm . Because garlic seldom produces seed , clove or bulbil must be used to propagate the harvest , and these always have the possibility of carrying nematodes . commercial-grade growers can use sources that rigorously shield the come fields for nematodes , but lowly - scale growers have a harder clip finding guaranteed nematode - clean stemma .
3. Thrips
Allium cepa thrips are a garlic plant ’s most common insect pest . Thrips rasp the leaves to acquire sap , cause terms that slows growth and bulb production . Severe thrip damage can make the plant to wilt and die . In general , thrips begin to enter garlic fields when the sess in neighboring fields set forth to dry out . Growers commonly monitor thrips migrations with sticky traps in their playing field .
This clause first appeared in the December / January 2004 issue ofHobby Farmsmagazine .
