It’s rotten to have to give a bad update. When you take time to dig the soil, amend it, select the plants and plunk them in the ground, you hope it all works out and that you get to eventually taste something yummy. It’s bad news for the garlic we so carefully planted way back in the fall and the young onions, too.
Shouldn’t these young onions be standing a little taller? Their leaves are looking deformed. (Photo taken May 23, 2017. Click on any photo to see a larger image.)
Mother nature had something else in mind when on the winds came a little yellow-headed fly. That critter laid her eggs on the onions, garlic and leeks. When they hatched the “worms” ate their way down to near the bulbs. Being full enough of onion or garlic leaves they transformed themselves into pupae and that’s what we found. Little brown grains of rice – actually they’re smaller than grains of rice but easy to see against the white Allium fruits.
Harvested garlic and leeks (elephant garlic) show the presence of Allium leafminer pupae. (Harvest photos taken June 14, 2017.)
Deformed leaves of garlic weren’t obvious in their early growth.
