Garlic Planting in Northern California

It is that time of year again. Garlic planting time. We love garlic and I plant 100-200 garlics per year.
The problem that I have is my soil has been contaminated with onion rot. A severe disease that can easily wipe out a crop. The nasty way to get ride of the disease is to fumigate the entire garden with chemicals so bad that some can not even be used by home gardeners. Obviously this will probably kill everything in the garden, and as a primarily organic gardener, I object to treating my garden this way.

Last year I went with sprinkling the garden with garlic juice. This is suppose to trigger the fungus that causes onion rot and since there is no real onion, it dies off. To do this it takes a lot of time because you need to do this several times to be effective and trigger the fungus bloom. Also the exact concentrations are a bit trick as a home gardener to figure out. There have been trials done in Canada that have had good results. The bottom line was: I did this last year, had moderate success, didn't have time to get it done this year.

The other way to tackle to problem is with a bacteria that lives off the disease. T22. This can be found in RootSheild and Root Guardian. This is the way I have decided to go this year. If I can repeatedly go after them with beneficial bacteria and get the bacteria established in my garden, maybe this is my answer.

So why do I plant garlic now, in November?
The final piece in the puzzle is to know that the onion rot disease isn't active in soil temperatures below 55 degrees Fahrenheit. So I use a soil thermometer and monitor the temperature. Once it goes below 55 and stays there is when I plant garlic. This way the garlic can get a head start in growing roots while the fungus is dormant. I will continue to drench the soil with the recommended dosage of T-22 and see what happens next spring.

Sadly, the onion rot doesn't appear (is noticeable) until you are just about to harvest. The garlic plants look fine up until May or June and then you notice unnatural leave yellowing that seems premature. I slight tug on the garlic and you have it in your hand with the awful rot around it.

One final note on onion rot is that is also doesn't survive at temperatures about 135 degrees. Last year I took bulbs that were on the edge (some rot, but not out of control) and washed them under 180+ degree water. While I know this is a BAD practice, we used this garlic right away and it did seem to lower the rate of post harvest garlic rotting.

I will become an expert at this disease because I refuse to accept conventional wisdom that says once onion rot is in your garden that it can stay there for 8-15 years. I simple love garlic too much and will not give in to the disease without a fight.

As for entering my last weeks information into http://www.plangarden.com/. Well I will do that this weekend when hopefully I will have more time to use the software that I created to help myself manage and control my own garden.

Planting the last of the potatoes

Planning a vegetable garden also means taking a few risks now and then. Here we are in the middle of November and I am planting potatoes.
Yes, I have read Pam Pierce's book "Golden Gate Gardening". And yes, it says it is too late to plant potatoes, although she says she sneaks them in every now and then.
I keep most of my garden idle in the winter and plant only leeks, lettuce and some broccoli, so I have the room. Planting potatatoes also allows me to dig deep into the soil, something I don't often do and put comost at the lower leve of my raised garden. So I have been planting potatoes ever few weeks so hope to have some success and a series of harvests of potatoes early next year.
So the point is, if you have some space that is idle and your soil is not frozen, why not take a chance and see if you can sneak in something that conventional wisdom says you shouldn't do.
Some times planning a vegetable garden is a detailed task of optimizing space for the summer to get every last drop of goodness out of a vegetable garden. Sometimes vegetable gardening should be throwing the dice. The worst that could happen is watching plants not mature.