Garlic is an example of how crop rotation can only go so far.
There are some pretty nasty soil borne garlic diseases and nematodes. They can decimate your field and ruin your crop.
YES, crop rotation is a tool to clean those fields up. In the worst cases it can take as long as 10 years away from alliums to break the disease cycles in that field.
BUT the catch is that you plant garlic cloves that were grown in the soil to produce your next crop. If those cloves were grown in your contaminated soil, then they will inoculate your new field with disease and nematodes.
In a nice dry year, diseases/nematodes might not spread far from the contaminated cloves.
In a wet year, they will spread through your field.
And in the worst years, you’ll lose most of your garlic crop from those contaminated cloves.
Crop rotation won’t help you if you move diseases from field to field.
You need to do something about your seed garlic.
That something is NOT Always Buy New Seed Garlic.
Every time you buy in garlic, you risk bringing in new soil borne problems.
The solution is to be very aware of the health of your garlic.
If you have soil borne garlic problems – then destroy your old garlic and buy in new garlic.
If your garlic is disease free – then cherish your current garlic and treat it well. Rotate your garlic carefully through your fields keeping it away from areas that have grown any alliums in recent years. And keep all strange garlic away from your fields!
???? ???? ???? ???? ????
Another solution for those who have patience is to start new seed garlic from garlic bulbils.
Garlic bulbils are the little bulbs that grow in the garlic scapes you didn’t harvest. Since bulbils don’t grow in the soil, they should be safe to plant in new ground and rebuild your seed garlic stock.
It takes a few years to get full bulbs from bulbils but they will be good bulbs!
???? ???? ???? ???? ????
So crop rotation is good for garlic. And clean seed garlic is just as important!
My next free online workshop is on Thursday December 2 at 2pm Eastern & 7pm Eastern …
