Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
vest the moment cloves become ripe. Treatment: clean affected bulbs well and put only healthy bulbs/
cloves into storage. Bacterial rot (pathogen:
Erwinia carotovora
) can affect garlic in wet summers.
Symptoms: glassy spots, sulfury odor. Prevention: drier growing location, raised beds. Treatment: re-
move infected plants. The garlic fly (
Suillia univittata
) can infest garlic patches. Larvae eat the inner-
most, newest leaves throughout the spring, warping and contorting them. Spring-planted garlic is not
attacked as severely as fall-planted garlic. Garlic growers in Austria's “wine quarter” report that heir-
loom varieties are attacked by garlic flies less frequently and survive attacks better than commercial
varieties.
CULTIVATION HISTORY
Garlic is a very old crop plant. It even has a name in Sanskrit, which can be
interpreted as evidence of its cultivation in Mesopotamia dating back to the third millennium
BC
. The
oldest archaeobotanical evidence is from Egypt, circa 1550
BC
. The Greek author Herodot reported
that garlic and other alliums were the primary source of nourishment for the slaves that built the pyr-
amids. In ancient Rome, garlic was considered a food of the peasantry, a stigma that held for a long
time; it is now one of the most important vegetable crops of southeastern Europe. In Switzerland and
Austria, garlic was long grown in vineyards, as the warm, sunny locations and minimally fertilized and
irrigated soils made for ideal garlic growing. Wild garlic is now naturalized in central European vine-
yards, along with crow garlic (
Allium vineale
).
CHIVES
Allium schoenoprasum
Chives are easy enough to grow in any garden, no matter how small. Individual varieties differ in the
vigor and height of their growth, the thickness of their hollow leaves, and the color of their flowers,
though descriptions of these are often missing in seed catalogs.
WHAT YOU'LL NEED
• three to five clumps for vegetative propagation
• 10 clumps to produce seed
POLLINATION NOTES
Like all alliums, chives are self-infertile outcrossers, meaning that different
varieties can cross-pollinate each other.
Chives seeds
