Allium Leaf Miner

Afternoon all,

Has anyone had issues with allium leaf miner this year?

I had around 200 onions affected this year which I’ve had to write off, most others over my allotment site have also had it. Onions at my parents allotment site 5 miles away have been affected too this year, when they never have been previously. Even the old boys with tonnes of experience have no idea what it is, one of them cut all his affected foliage off and is in complete denial that he’s got an issue.

It’s all a bit weird as it’s never been a problem before, I wasn’t even aware it was an issue until recently when I was trying to find out what was going on.

Anyone got any insight into why this has suddenly become an issue when it never has been previously? And potentially how to prevent it from causing issues next year?

Cheers,

Chris

Used to get it on the plot some years, not so much on others, it always seemed worse when we had hot weather, though. So I'm not surprised if this is a bad year for it.
Leaf Miner or Leek Moth?
https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/allium-leaf-miner

I have ALM severely on leeks every year. For some reason it’s not really an issue with onions. Considering it will wipe out a whole bed leeks in a blink of an eye I find it quite strange about the onions. It’s defo ALM as well rather than something else. I have some ultra fine netting this year. Will see if it works.

on our main onion bed about 12x4 feet we had covered this with insect mesh mainly to keep foxes off when seedlings first put in left this on for a good while now taken off none of these onions have any damage but the spares that were put into gaps between other crops [cant throw anything away] many of these have twisted and distorted stems i think the covering early on has helped but maybe we may get damage to these later in season??.