Wind whipped

12 years ago

This year's garlic crop seemed to be doing better than normal until the last couple of weeks. It is always windy here, but abnormally so of late. There have been many days with sustained winds of 30-40+ mph combined with a couple of days at 100 degrees. Watering has been maintained but the tip of every leaf on every plant is scorched back a bit.

Has anyone else had this experience and what effect did it have on the crop? Gettin' worried...

This post was edited by hortster on Thu, May 8, 14 at 13:59

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Comments (4)

Garylane
12 years ago
My garlic here has the same problem. This is the windiest year i can remember plus we have only had 2" of rain all year. I picked scapes of my Pskem garlic today, I think the hot temps the past week is speeding them up.
Gary
OldDutch (Zone 4 MN)
12 years ago
A little tip burn from the wind is not going to harm the plants or decrease your harvest. When whole leaves go from the bottom up that is a different matter. A good mulch will help maintain a uniform ground moisture and that will help the plants, but it looks like you got a good robust stand as it is.

Did you lip the border of your garlic bed to help with watering? I do that in the summer, too. I try to mulch to the top of the lip and a bit above and that really cuts down on the need to water as well as weeds. You just pull back a bit of mulch to check, and if needed flood the "trough" right through the mulch. All you really need to take special care of is leveling the trough bed so it floods uniformly.
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hortster
Original Author
12 years ago
Gary, no scapes on this Spanish Roja yet. Checked my records and scapes started to show up around May 20 last year. Still keeping you in mind for this fall so keep that crop growin'!

Dutch, it is hard to tell in the picture but I've set all three rows up exactly as you describe with the troughs. Water stands evenly from one end to the other. The planting is small enough that I hand water as needed to maintain even moisture. Never have mulched although I do have plenty of compost and should get off my backside and get some on there. Your comment about the scorch eases my worry a bit! Thanks.
OldDutch (Zone 4 MN)
12 years ago
hortster,

the troughing worked real well for me during the summer. and then the mulch really cut down on watering needs even then. I saw no reason to water the atmosphere and the walkways being in a statewide drought and all.

But I found out the hardway not to use it for fall planting, we got some real strange thaw/refreezes a year ago and that cost me almost my entire fall planting; so I did not trench last fall and this spring I have almost a perfect stand (except for the elephant garlic...) , some of which is almost knee high already. I left enough flat borders to build a lip though.

Last year at this time, the ground wasn't even thawed around here yet and it would a good almost three weeks before I would be able to replant!