by Wally Richards

GARLIC

Yes, readers, it’s that time of the year when we once again plant our garlic cloves and dream of big fat bulbs in December/January to harvest.

That once was a normal pattern but has, in the last few years, gone from a dream to a nightmare as a dreaded rust commonly known as Garlic Rust has invaded New Zealand with devastating outcomes at harvest.

Small bulbs with tiny cloves are not worth the effort of peeling to use.

I remember the days when one could pop a few fat cloves into a rich garden soil and forget them till harvest time which 99 times out of a hundred would have big bulbs with fat cloves to hang in strings, for all the world to see and obviously be security against roaming Vampires.

Garlic rust, a fungal disease, was first identified in New Zealand in 2015 — that’s 10 years of misery and frustration.

Here is what one lot of professional growers have realised (taken from the Internet)

Rust does NOT transfer to the seed, thankfully you can still plant cloves from plants that were affected with rust.

Ok thats good advise overall and should be a help to garlic enthusiasts.

In the past I have suggested sprays such as Wallys cell strengthening and even the new Wallys Copper Nutrient. They seemed to helped but still not a silver bullet.

One thing that I have suggested that has helped to obtain better sized cloves even after the rust has affected the crop is Liquid Sunshine. (Table spoon molasses dissolved in a litre hot water and when cool sprayed over foliage)

This gets more carbs into the plants which the rust has prevented from sunlight, thus a better size bulb is produced, not perfect but better.

Today as I was thinking about this article I suddenly remembered tips I have given to those that love to grow Buxus but have problems with the Buxus disease.

There are two parts to this program; firstly spraying your garlic leaves with Perkfection once a month starting a couple of months after you have planted the cloves.

You can add molasses and Magic Botanic Liquid to the spray and only spray the foliage in the morning or about midday so the leaves will be dry later going into evening.

Another thing is never water the plants late in the day as that will leave moisture on the leaves going into the cooler evening when the disease can take hold.

Now the other part is covering the leaves with a film that prevents the rust from settling on the leaves.

I have suggested this to Buxus growers who want to have perfect looking plants.

How you can do this is simple; spraying the foliage with Vaporgard about every four weeks starting when you have a nice showing of leaves and hopefully before rust comes along.

Vaporgard film will do two things; it develops a pomerised skin over each leaf which filters out UVA and UVB.

Providing a sunscreen for the chlorophyll, which is normally under attack by UV rays. This results in a darker green color of the foliage within a few days of application.

The chlorophyll build-up makes the leaf a more efficient food factory, producing more carbohydrates, which means a bigger bulb.

The film prevents moisture and rust from settling on the bare leaf and thus should stop the rust from developing.

Repeat sprays about two to 4 weekly dependent on speed of new growth are desirable.

Now if your leaves of the garlic are covered in Vaporgard film then spraying Perkfection or molasses is pointless as they also cant get to the leaf through the film. So to overcome this, you simply add one ml of Raingard to each litre of spray so that the two films merge and allows the Perkfection and molasses to enter the leaves and protect and increase the carbs for bigger bulbs.

Otherwise you could water the two into the root zone so the plant takes them up thought its roots.

For a great choice of different types of garlic gloves to grow, go to https://tematagarlic.nz/

They still have a good range of garlic types available, but they sell out fast. I purchased mine a couple months ago. They also have growing tips and products to aid growing.