Growing Alli

[mnjrutherford]

I'm getting some interesting conflicts on this business of growing alliums.
CONFLICT A
Alliums must be rotated. Keep a garden space allium free for at least 3 to 5 years before growing them there again.
V.S.
IN THE WILD (this seems to be a key point here) alliums will grow profusely and return faithfully year after year.

CONFLICT B
Alliums (some at least) don't produce or grow from seed.
V.S.
Those non seed producing alliums (garlic and shallot in particular) have, on occasion at least, produced seed if grown biennially.

With regard to conflict A, I'm thinking that rotation would only be necessary in the context of a farm setting. However, if allium production were in a garden setting, as in edible/visual gardening (Telsing's recent postings being a perfect example of what I'm talking about) rather than a miniature farm, having it naturalize then harvesting as necessary preclude the need for rotation.

This would then impact conflict B in that if you naturalize shallot or garlic or other non seeding allium, it's possible that you could indeed produce seed. Of course the following question would then be whether or not the seed would be viable or produce true.

What do you mad scientist types have to say about this?

[plantsnobin]

Well, I only grow the ornamental types, all of which are perennial so I can't help you on this really, but I can say that things like garlic chives, and nodding onion self seed readily. I can send you home with plenty come September.

[ottawagardener]

Conflict A:

Rotation is an interesting subject. It is common to have wild patches of alliums and these are naturalized in lots of settings. If you think of natural settings, then if one patch is hit by disease or pests, the strongest or most resistant may make it or the entire patch would be wiped out but there would be other patches (hopefully) to carry on. In a mixed planting, you aren't growing all your alliums in farm tidy rows with less possible chemical interactions in soil and air from a multitude of different plant types.

As for rotation of perennial vegetables of which garlic, shallots, chives, walking onion and many others are, then you can see it like fruit trees. Grow your onions for as long as they will grow in that same spot, but make sure you let them wander about if they want to tap into new resources or to avoid problems that you may not be aware of. Also, don't replant a spot that had a perennial allium (living many, many years hopefully) with another allium.

Most rotation rules are based on big agri IPM (integrated pest management) systems.

Conflict B:

Other people can address this better but it seems that certain garlic will produce seed. I know shallots are often grown from seed though I am not sure of the details of this. My shallot has never flowered but that doesn't mean anything. I find that my hardneck garlic will send up a flower stalk every year when fall planted which I then cut off and eat. My varieties produce bulblets rather than seeds as far as I know.

The thing about allowing a garlic to grow several years in a row is that you don't necessarily get the kind of bulking up of the bulbs you might want. I have left garlic accidentally in the ground and it came back like this:



You can see that each clove formed a little bulb. I don't know if they would clump out again but I suspect to get big cloves, you'd want to replant them with some more space between.

On an interesting note: www.fragrantpathseeds.com/ has variegated serpent garlic. Anyone have any they want to share with me

[ottawagardener]

As for letting other alliums naturalize, especially those that are naturally clump forming or self seeding, sounds like a fun idea to me. Plant garlic chives, and if your experience will be anything like mine, then you'll have a thriving, self reliant population!

[mjc]

All alliums will produce seed, even the bubil producing ones will occasionally set seed....some only under certain conditions (Ramps go seven years or more from sprouting to flowering, for example).

As to rotation...mostly that has to do with bulb onions and garlic, as these two are too 'pampered' and are susceptible to too many diseases. That's another good reason to grow your own onion plants...less chance of introducing a virus. There is also the fact that unless you have a very large garden area (1/4 acre or more) rotation isn't really doing much of anything, for disease prevention, at least.

[PatrickW]

It's really important to rotate garlic. It can develop all kinds of serious problems if you just let it regrow in the same place. Garlic also can produce seeds in some circumstances, but these conditions have to be artificially created. Garlic has evolved beyond the point where it will produce seeds on it's own in the wild. This was true with shallots until recently, but now some varieties of shallot have been developed that have reverted to an older evolutionary state and will produce seed again.

Like mjc said it's mostly only the domesticated alliums that need rotation. Those that grow wild or perennially are mostly disease resistant.

[paquebot]

We do not rotate our garlic but take extra precautions to avoid introducing any diseases. The emphasis has always been on building the soil up to where it is more suitable to better growth. If commercial suppliers had to rotate annually, many would become a biennial operation. I believe that Filaree has only .75 acre which is certified for growing their organic stock. We planted on .82 acre last fall and dealing with about 30,000 plants. More land is available but the logistics involved in maintaining a dual system make it virtually impossible.

Martin

[mjc]

I've followed up garlic/other alliums with short season cover crops/green manure...I wonder if we can come up with a mix that would be helpful in controlling any potential allium diseases/bugs?

[canadamike]

The new shallots from seed are coming fron the Netherlands, and the french won't accept them. Subtle differences it seems...

As for garlic, if you forget them you'll always get a bunch of small cloves.

If you plant a big clove you will get many small ones, so you are better to plant small ones to get a few larger cloves.

[paquebot]

Jan 29, 2010 13:44:59 GMT -5 mjc said:

I've followed up garlic/other alliums with short season cover crops/green manure...I wonder if we can come up with a mix that would be helpful in controlling any potential allium diseases/bugs?

That's not rotation but merely planting something to fill in between mid-July and October. Most diseases that allium may get are not negated by planting a short-lived cover crop. At least one entire growing season must be skipped in order to rid the soil of certain diseases or insects. For short term, we've tried rye which created more problems from its coarse straw. Best so far has been just plain oats with the tender stalks quick to break up just by disking. The rye also created a weed problem the following year which the oats should not. Tested some white clover but initial growth too slow to be of much use. So we just keep adding more horse manure, testing the soil for whatever elements are needed, and planting garlic again the following year.

Martin

[mjc]

I wasn't thinking particularly as 'rotation' but more along the lines of something that would both build the soil and hopefully be somewhat suppressive of the major allium 'problems', since two of the major ones are fungal and viral in origin. The fungi would probably be much easier to control/suppress, this way.

[toad]

It seems like seed-propagated shallot is more closely related to onions than to vegetatively propagated shallots, according to this article:
www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v78/n4/abs/hdy199763a.html

Did anyone ever harvest seeds from traditional shallots, that would grow?

[seedywen]

As a small market gardener, my garlic crop is on a three year rotation. Each year, the garlic crop is given the best nutrition, I can manage,composted manure, compost and soil ammendments like green sand and rock phosphate, etc. under each bulblet.

Always trying to build soil health for excellent garlic and generally have succeeded for many years. Then. One spring(two years ago) disaster struck!

It was an unusally wet, long spring and my crop was planted fairly intensively. Garlic rust, caused every plant in the crop to succumb before maturity. I was shell-shocked!

Had never even heard of garlic rust. To imagine a year without mature garlic, was almost unthinkeable. From my internet research thought I had to dig up entire crop and take it off the property and destroy. Instead of such a huge job, elected to cover the entire crop with cardboard and a heavy mulch, still wondering how far and lethal the spores would spread. Would I be able to grow garlic next year on my farm?

Bought healthy garlic from a disease-free source and planted next years crop as far away on my property as could from the previous years crop. Thankfully the next year's crop was fine.

[flowerpower]

I'm not going to rotate garlic every yr. I'd spend too much time picking out rocks. lol As long as they are disease free and the sizes are fine, I'm not going to stress about it.

[PatrickW]

One of the risks you take if you don't rotate garlic is that White Rot will establish itself in your garden, where it will remain a minimum of 20 years, and possibly indefinitely.

westernfarmpress.com/mag/farming_white_rot_major/

My understanding is this is basically what happened to the California garlic industry in the 1980s. Farmers didn't rotate their crops, and at some point there wasn't any uninfected land available any more and chemical controls were too expensive and didn't really work. Eventually the industry had to relocate somewhere else.

Another general problem with garlic is it is a heavy feeder, and if you keep reusing the same ground it will become very depleted.

Garlic can be grown very intensively, I grow about 1000 bulbs on 22m2 (about 237 ft2) each year. It's a better strategy to grow it very intensively and rotate it, then to skip rotations all together.

Garlic Rust:

This is a lot more common in Europe than the US. The last I heard the only garlic rust areas in the US were around Gilroy, CA and a few places in Oregon. I get it every year on my plants. Sometimes it's really bad, but other years it's not a serious problem. If you have it in your area, you will probably get it every year no matter what. It's spread very quickly by wind. If you do get it, generally the best strategy is to just let your plants keep growing as long as possible, even though they may be a source of infection for other plants. While hygiene is always important, like removing infected plant material, this isn't likely to keep you from getting it again the following year.

Following a suggestion from Søren ('toad' on this forum), I started spraying milk on my plants this past year. It's a little hard to say for sure, but my impression is it helped a lot. I will certainly be continuing trying this. Basically, 10-40% nonfat milk diluted with water, sprayed on the plants weekly and after rain. You need to make sure you cover all surfaces of the plants. You should begin before the plants become infected, and continue until the situation is hopeless or harvest, which ever comes first. This won't prevent infection, but will probably slow it down considerably.

www.patnsteph.net/weblog/2009/05/milk-and-rust/

The other thing to make sure is you don't use any fresh manure or other high nitrogen fertilizer, as this will stress the plants and make the rust much worse.