I tried to grow two varieties of garlic and three varieties of onions in my new raised beds. The raised beds that I did my best to fill with uninfected soil. All crops failed, though for different reasons.
The seed-propagated shallot failed so completely that I do not even have a picture of the failed harvest, because literally zero plants grew to a size worth talking about.
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The other two varieties did fare better in the sense that I did harvest something worth eating, but the bulbs are really small.
The main reasons why the onions failed were two:
- The seed snails did not work out very well, as I wrote in the spring when planting them out. The roots attached to the landscaping fabric and when I was planting them out, they got damaged, and the plants had to grow new ones.
- The spring was very cold, and the plants did not grow at all for a very long time. I gave some surplus seedlings to my neighbor who planted them in their greenhouse, and she told me they grew OK there. So it seems that to get reliable-ish onions, I will probably need to devise some portable polytunnel shelter for the raised beds.
At least the onions did not get any fungal disease this year, so in that sense, it was a success. I bought permaculture seeds of old variants to try out next year, and if those fail too, I won’t grow onions anymore.
The carrots that shared the same bed with the onions are still growing, but they will not be as good as those I got last year. For reasons unknown to me, the seeds had a difficult time this year taking off, and about one-quarter did not emerge from the ground, despite being pre-germinated just like last year.
And the garlic…
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I have 8 heads of garlic Janko, out of 10 cloves that I saved and planted from last year. And I do not know how many heads of the variety Dukát I got. In the picture it looks like an OK harvest. However…
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Half the plants were infected. I put them in the hottest and sunniest place in the garden to dry out (a gravel path), and I will burn them afterwards. I think it is white rot, Botrytis porri. I will have to try a different fungicide next year, or I will have to forgo garlic completely, since it is evident that this fucking plague is now everywhere in my garden. I will have to look at this issue a bit more thoroughly, because it does not make sense to spend more on fungicides than I would on the garlic itself.
Yeah, the white rot is an absolute nightmare -- my entire allotment is infected and I haven’t been able to grow garlic or onions in years, although spring onions and leeks still do fine. I’ve read claims that you can get rid of it by applying a garlic spray -- the idea being that this triggers the spores to develop, but they have nothing to infect so they die. I’ve tried it without success, but I was pretty half-hearted about it, and I keep meaning to try again properly.
The seed snails worked really well for me, but I used cut-up compost bags, so no issue with the roots growing into it.