First Harvest of the Year...... Garlic

I have harvested all my Garlic already, its only June. The plan was not to pull it up this early but things happen that change your plans. I over wintered the garlic with my onions and they were doing brilliantly however over the last month or so they got rust on the leaves and were looking terrible. Only the garlic was suffering, the onions are thriving and have no sign of rust yet! The rust was killing the leaves and I noticed that the plants were trying to send out new shoots and at first I thought great they will keep on going. When I looked closer though the cloves in the bulb were growing individually and thus as new plants all together. So if I was going to use them at all I needed to get them up.

I was actually rather surprised at the size of them, most are bigger than any garlic I have grown before with well formed plump cloves. All in all 40 bulbs of garlic are now drying in the shed.

Unplanned as it might have been to lift them now and have an unexpected empty part of my veg bed it does give me the opportunity to get something else in. Its still early enough to get another batch of sweetcorn going so that is what I am going to do. I had an unused pack of Eskimo White Corn sitting in the seed tin. I just got to run some manure and fertiliser through and hopefully double my money. 

Lupin Update

So a few days ago I posted about one of my lupins looking like it was about to pop its cloggs (die). The leaves gad all wilted and the flowers were turning brown and limp to one side. From that post David Innes replied and gave me a check list to see if I could work out what the problem could be.... So I did. I looked over the plant to see if I could find anything abnormal above soil level other that the obvious wilting there was nothing.

I then cut one of the stems to see if I could see any discolouring or rot, nothing again. So finally I I dug it up and looked at the roots.

I didn't even need to wash the dirt from the roots to see the problem, large parts of it had turned to a squiggy mush and turned a rotten brown. And where the root met the stem it was semi rotted turning blacky brown and hollow. THATS WHY IT WILTED! The Stems were not getting water nutrition because of this rot.

What caused this, I do not know but all my other lupins will be being watched carefully. It could be disease or it could be the soil conditions i suppose that instigated the down fall of my poor Lupin.

Lupins and Fusarium Root Rot? Or something else completely!?

Its still early in the summer and I have few plants in flower, my Lupins being an exception. They are in full bloom and looking amazing as they always do. However over the last couple of weeks one of the plants has started to look really ill. Nearly all the leaves have become yellow and wilted.

As you can see from the picture it is looking in a right state, the flowers are now even starting to go the same way. As soon as I noticed I looked at the RHS website to see if I could find a cause, but powdery mildew and leaf spot the only too listed diseases didn't fit the bill. I may be wrong and being a hypochondriac about my plants the symptoms seem to point to root rot or Fusarium wilting. Two terms when applied to Lupins means absolutely nothing to me.  The literature I have found online has been rather wordy and does not state if there is anything I can do... just the symptoms and the causes. This blog article was the most indepth info i could find and probably inseminated my mind that my lupin has Fasarium Root Rot.

In any case this Lupin looks like it is on its last legs and I will probably dig it out in the next day or two. My other lupins are so fare unaffected and Iwant to keep it that way whatever the reason it is wilting on me.