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Garlic rust
Outdoor girl
Posts: 286
in Plants
I realised late last night that the 'brown' leaves on my garlic was in fact, rust. I have chopped off the leaves & binned them. Is it ok to leave the stumps in the ground because the bulbs are still quite small? Or should I lift them and store - probably in the freezer!
Any advice would be most welcome.
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Oops! Just realised there is a similar thread going on - sorry!
If my garlic suffered from rust this year, I wouldn't use the cloves for planting out the next crop. I would buy new bulbs so there is no risk of rust being passed on, hopefully.
I don't think it affects the bulbs (which certainly don't need to be frozen - the whole point of them is that you dry them for the winter). I had awful rust on one lot...
...so , as you can see I've had to dig them up. Unfortunately it seems to have spread to the others so they've had it too. Don't want it spreading to the onions and leeks. Apparently it comes from long grass, which gets the same fungus, so I'm now trying to keep that down.
The garlic at Barnsdale gardens had the worst rust I've ever seen
In the sticks near Peterborough
It's now pretty much agreed that the culprit is Leek rust, as I've mentioned before. See the RHS advice:
http://rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=214
I followed all the links and they were most helpful. At least I'm not the only one growling!! I think it is my fault too - I planted them too close. Next year I'll put them somewhere else well away from anything oniony. Thank you all.
hmm... that could make the rotation difficult...
I assume this can affect chives too....? If so, mine have succumbed....
If I plant them in a flower bed, it should not really be too much of a problem unless there are some chives there too...