This was last year's garlic
Garlic is supposed to be one of the easiest crops to grow and we’ve had great luck with it in the past. In fact, we just finished the garlic we grew and stored from last year. But not this year. We had some kind of rot. The leaves died back early. And with many of the plants, there was no bulb to be found. The plants just broke off at ground level.
I’m no garlic expert. I’ve never had a problem before. But a brief search online revealed two kinds of rot, one that likes cold, the other that prefers heat. Well, we had an incredible amount of snow over the winter. Could the garlic we planted in the snow have suffered too much cold? Maybe because I neglected to put down the usual thick layer of straw mulch? Or were they done in by this year’s very hot spring?
Or maybe I just chose a weak variety of garlic. We did harvest some bulbs. But usually we don’t start pulling garlic until much later in June. I just couldn’t bear to look at these dying garlic plants any longer.
These are the mysteries that plague food gardeners. Back to the drawing board….
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
I live 15 miles west of you in Virginia and I had a bad harvest as well. The bulbs are small and it’s like the cloves didn’t form. It smells delicious and I’m sure I can use it, but it’s awfully odd…