Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

It's garlic planting time - you can be earlier than “that shortest day” myth! Usually people say: plant on shortest day and harvest on the longest day. That gives a bit of an indication of how garlic “likes it”. But over the past decade I noticed a few problems with garlic that are difficult to control and the most important one is rust disease. It’s a fungal disorder that hammers the bulb-forming members of alliums (onion genus group of the family amaryllidaceae). The fungus enters the long, soft leaves of shallots, onions and garlic and causes yellowing of the leaves, ill-thrift and sick-looking plants towards the end of the growing season, when temperatures rise in spring. The most significant diagnostic sign are the bright yellow “pustules” that form on the leaves – these pustules are easily rubbed off by your finger.So I have been trialling a much earlier planting regime: This year I started planting my first row on 2 May, second row on 15 May; third one goes in on 22 May...today! I can monitor their hea