OK - so I can't always be upbeat but I'm turning lemons into lemonade by learning - every failure is a chance for education, right?!
This time my garden has been hit by Bacterial Soft Rot. This disease attacks many different types of vegetables and has shown up in a large bed of garlic. The first indication that something was wrong appeared in mid-June when I noticed that a lot of the stalks were turning yellow and brown and flopping over. Garlic will do that later in the season and that's when you know the bulbs are ready to pull up. This was much too early.
I tugged on those affected stems and the bulbs came right out of the ground with no resistance whatsoever. The bulbs had no roots and were soft, mushy and very stinky! A sure sign of a bacterial disease.
This disease is caused by an organism called Erwinia carotovora and may occur where soils are wet. My soil is very well-drained, bordering on droughty so I was surprised to see this problem. I have gardened here for 30 years and haven't had any problems before last year - remember the late blight on the tomatoes?
I quickly pulled up all the garlic, separating the unaffected bulbs from the diseased ones. The latter went in plastic bags and into the trash. I did not want to put them in the compost pile for fear of spreading the disease around, in case the compost does not get hot enough to kill off the bacteria. It's not worth taking a chance.
The salvageable bulbs were cleaned off and left to dry spread out on a wire mesh bench in a hot greenhouse for about a week. Then I brushed off any remaining soil on the bulbs and put them in mesh onion bags to keep.
Because the garlic is not mature, I don't think the bulbs will store through the winter so I plan on making lots of pesto, sauces, and chopping and freezing the raw garlic for later use.
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