Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: bigben on June 06, 2011, 22:20
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Last year was my first on this allotment and around a third of my onions got whiterot. This year I have grown winter onions and garlic in a different bed but have found the same problem.
I lifted my winter onions last week as some looked a bit yellow and had flopped. The garlic is in the same bed and from the few I have lifted they seem to have the same problem while others appear to still be green - should I lift them before they get it or do I leave them to continue to grow for another month?
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The white rot fungus hangs around in the soil for about 20 years - provided that no other alliums are grown there for that time. Not what you want to hear but that's the way it is.
You could pull one garlic to see how it's doing. If a good size you might consider pulling the rest and prepping it as a puree in oil or vinegar for storage rather than leaving them as cloves which will undoubtedly suffer later in storage.
Onions, well, that truly is a hard call to make with this problem. Perhaps a local organic grower can supply your needs for this year, and next.
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I don't know how edible onions are if they are succumbing to white rot. If the ones still look healthy I'd be tempted to cut my losses and get them up, chop them and freeze them (in an open layer, then you put them into a bag after freezing so they don't clump together).
But I've not had the problem so am not entirely sure if what I've suggested is a good idea.
The really bad news is that white rot persists in the soil for decades so I'd resign yourself to not being able to grow them on the plot for the foreseeable future. There is no legal treatment for it.
If you decide to grow them anywhere else e.g. at home, you will need to take very good care not to transfer the pathogen from plot to home. This could happen on boots, trowels, gloves, etc - you get the picture.
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All is not lost as there is an organic treatment, already being used by British farmers, which I am trialling this year.
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I have a tub of garlic powder sitting in my shed on the allotment waiting for the soil to be wet enough to dig over and spread it over my onion patch ready for next year's crop.
We've just had an inch of rain :D
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Aunt Sally - I have ordered a 3kg tub of garlic powder so plan on getting started doing the bed I hope to use next year. Depending on the dose needed I might just try to dose each of my beds with a view to improving the situation. I guess the problem with just doing one is that I run the risk of simply transferring it from an untreated bed back onto the one I have treated just by walking around.
Anyone out there who has used this treatment succesfully? In doing a bit of research it seems this is the only none "nuclear" option. There are a couple of chemicals around like Jeyes fluid, neither of which are legal to use for cleaning the soil. I dont like the idea of soaking my soil in phenols etc.
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We use a lot of Onions, Garlic and Shallots.
I don't know what I would do if I got White Rot on my plot.
You have my sympathy.
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I have white rot at the edge of the onion plot............I am devastated to read all this bad news.Black leg yesterday,now this.I feel like packing it all in and taking up cross stitch , piano playing and internet gaming,which is what I did before.........
Is there no way of putting something in the soil in the autumn to cleanse or disinfect the soil so the white rot doesn`t affect the following years crop?
I`m wondering if this is why my allotment was vacated,bad husbandry from the person before,and all these problems were there already before I arrived.
Someone ,please give me something positive to hang onto !! :wacko:
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There isn't anything legally available to sterilise the soil, I'm afraid.
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Went to the plot this morning and found some onions looking 'not quite right' pulled one up to find the dreaded white rotting, and hardly any roots :( Pulled the other ones that looked the same. *sniff sniff* All that work growing them from seeds :ohmy:
Do I now clear the whole bed before it spreads to the other 'healthy looking' ones :unsure: or leave those alone and hope for the best. ...decisions decisions!
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Sorry to hear this Mum - as you know I had problems with my garlic but did have hopes for my spring planted onions which were on a different bed that was previously very overgrown and I hoped that this meant it would not have been used for onions for a good few years.
Sadly, like you I am finding onions that have got it. I have resigned myself to just one bed for onions, garlic etc next year. I am going to grow more fruit, have a decent sized strawberry bed and find some other stuff to grow instead. It is going to force me to grow new stuff which might be a good thing.
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if its any consolation (prob not), my shallots grown in the same bed as the onions hit with AWR are all ok.
i've garlic powder ready to treat the whole bed once the shallots are up in the next week or so. and i think as precaution i will treat the other beds over the course of the summer as they are harvested.
the infected bed will go to fallow next year, covered in manure and mulch and hopefully in yr 3 we'll be ok
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Ah, poor Mum! :wub:
Seems very strange that it started in your onions from seed - you'd think that would be the safest way of keeping it off the plot wouldn't you...............?
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Tis a shame innit :(
It can only be part of that bed as well, cos the other end of the bed grew lovely leeks last year.... I'm assuming that they get the same rot :unsure:
The red onions from seed -further up the bed - still look good and are firmly rooted, so I'm leaving those ones in to see what happens :blink: Seems to be affecting Sweet Spanish a bit and most of the Walla Walla :wacko:
Where they were growing the clay sits a bit nearer the surface, and they had morning shade from the tall peas, so perhaps they have been a bit too wet in the last couple of weeks, after the rain finally arrived here!
I sure hope it doesn't mean I can't grow any more onions, at all, ever :(
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Are you sure it is actually white rot, Mum, rather than simply rotting off owing to damp conditions? Is it prevalent on other plots?
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There are patches of it spread over the site apparently :( One OB showed me the gaps in his onion bed....quite a few missing where he'd been removing the worst.
My onion bulbs looked ok, but the foliage had started to flop. So I I lifted one to see what it was like and the roots had rotted away, so there was nothing holding it into the soil, and the bottom of the bulb had white mould on it. OBs seemed to think that it was White Rot..I've never seen it before!
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Sadly, i think i have a problem with this too on my onions :(.
several of my Hurcules onions have died off and whilst weeding they have come away out of the soil and look rotten at the base. i have removed the ones that look infected as the majority still look ok. My Snowball all look fine, i am hoping that it is a bad batch of 'sets' or the weather conditions rather than this problem but time will tell. I havent ever had this problem before.
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White rot seems extra bad this yr :(
One of my friends from a different site tells me the commitee are going to suggest a site ban on alliums. I cant see the point in this as if in 20yrs they lift the ban and i or anyone else walks on it they have white rot again. He is going to bring this up at the meeting.
Its intresting to see you have no white rot Yorkie all our site is riddled with it :(.
The only one who doesnt get white rot is one old chap who sprays his with an illegal substance, which works! but not for organic me. I wont say what it is as the internet police will get me, but anyone wants to know pm me (am i allowed to say that even?)
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No you're not MW >:(
Some people on my site have it, and I suppose the risk is always there that I will transfer it to my own plot or home garden by contamination on my boots.
Our site is shaped like a capital L. The heel / middle area is quite a bit higher than the extremes. I'm halfway down the short length, the white rot is currently isolated towards the bottom of the long length, where it is wetter. Although the fungus will travel through the water table, I'm hopeful that it won't work its way up the hill and down again!
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I'm getting the impression from recent posts that there is a lot of this nasty fungus appearing in quite unexpected circumstances; we all know that potato and tomato blight spores are airborne and can affect anyone anywhere in the right (wrong!) circumstances, but as I understand it allium white rot has to be "imported" via already infected soil or plant material to cause a problem in previously clean soil.
Can't help wondering where the infections are coming from; could it be that the increased use of "council compost" in commercial products is something to do with it?
I'm sure we all like to think that bought compost is sterilised before sale but how do we know that is actually true 100% of the time?
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I suspect the same as you JayG. The old boys on the site are using things I am sure they shouldn't be doing to try and get rid of it. :ohmy: It's very upsetting to see everyone having to pull up and burn their alliums.
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We often see posts where blight is assumed to be the problem, but in fact isn't - and I wonder whether this similarly the case in some cases of affected alliums?
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Thats what i am hoping for with my onions....hopefully it is a bad batch or the weather conditions...time will tell ::)
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I just hope with the worse cases this yr my leeks will be ok, they normally are.
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We have white rot on our site too.
I went to a Q&A session on Wednesday night where we were advised to grow from seed if we had white rot as it was imported on the sets.
I was going to post a question about which onion seeds to buy but I guess he was wrong :(
Elaine
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I'm wondering if the damp / wet weather we have all recently had is causing the problem. I have previously grown alliums in my plot with no problem whatsoever, as have others on my site.
This year there seems to be sporadic rots appearing in garlic and onions particularly where there has been no previously known problems. It is limited to one or 2 bulbs or so on each plot on our site. The strange thing is its not until you lift the plant that you see the rot..................the top growth is behaving the same on all plants, no early wilting or fading.
There doesn't seem to be any significant difference between those who started their onions / garlic in compost or directly in the plot, so compost contamination can't be a consideration in our case (although I agree the increased use of 'council compost' might need to be factored in in the future).
I'm going for the weather option as the cause at the moment, but will obviously be aware next season.
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I think the weather has contributed alot this yr to the 'extra' white rot. But i dont blame the weather if u got it u got it, and if you havent im sure some friend has on the bottom of his shoe for you.
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I think the weather has contributed alot this yr to the 'extra' white rot. But i dont blame the weather if u got it u got it, and if you havent im sure some friend has on the bottom of his shoe for you.
I agree if you have white rot you have it and its a genuine problem and certainly can't be blamed on the weather.
What I'm saying and I think one or two others might agree is that there is evidence of rot which doesn't seem to be consistent with the usual symptoms ie wilting fading plants before 'their time'.
As someone else has previously alluded to many old boys have generic diagnoses of what is wrong.................any dark spots on spuds is blight, even if the conditions for a smith period are not met (or even vaguely close), any kind of rot in alliums is white onion rot etc etc.
In my case I had 3 bulbs of garlic which were beginning to rot, their top growth appeared normal, and was in the same condition as the rest of the bed. When lifted there was no evidence of white rot at all. This is why I'm blaming the weather. Shortly before lifting my garlic we had torrential rain, having had none at all for months.
Rain around harvesting of alliums can be a bit of a death knell for them. They are beginning to die back naturally, rain comes along and cannot be taken up by the roots, sits around the plant which then succumbs to rot.
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Can anyone clarify exactly what to look for for white rot? I've pulled up one small bulb which was a bit rotten at the bottom, but the other onions are looking ok. One or two of them have one or two yellow leaves, and not all the leaves are completely upright - is this normal, or something to worry about?
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here's the RHS page for info
http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?pid=226
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Nikki makes a good point - I've not been around on these forums as long as some (and not personally experienced any type of allium rot so far) but just because I can't remember anything other than allium white rot being mentioned doesn't mean there aren't other types of rot which are hopefully less damaging and persistent. :unsure:
I suppose it depends on with how much certainty you can make the identification - for most growers I'd imagine there's an awful lot at stake here. :(