Free In Pursuit of Garlic by Liz Primeau Page B

devils.
    There’s one bug that’s scaring the garden gloves off garlic growers in eastern Canada these days: the leek moth, Acrolepiopsis assectella. It’s an uninvited European species that probably made its way to Canada on infected plant material, and it has been significantly damaging garlic crops in eastern Ontario, southern Quebec, and Prince Edward Island since it appeared in the Ottawa area in 1993, tunneling into and eating the leaves, scapes, and bulbs. It’s now reported in upper New York State. In March 2010 the Canadian Food Inspection Agency released a parasitic wasp in hopes it would control the moth, but results won’t be known for several years.
    If you live in these areas and discover the leek moth, Paul Pospisil of the Garlic News suggests an old-fashioned approach to control: checking for cocoons and larvae daily and crushing them by hand to reduce the population. The larvae can reach just over half an inch (1.4 centimeters) in length and are yellowish-green with pale brown heads and eight gray spots on each abdominal segment. Adult moths are reddish-brown, about one-quarter inch (0.6 centimeters) long, with a white triangular mark in the middle of the folded wings; hind wings are heavily fringed and pale gray to black.
    Gophers love garlic and will eat the whole crop if they can. Chester Aaron, who grows garlic in Sonoma County, California, and is the author of The Great Garlic Book, Garlic Is Life, Garlic Kisses, and more, protects his garlic by growing it in raised beds framed with wood and set on chicken wire. Grasshoppers can be a threat: in Texas it was reported that a heavy infestation in 2004 destroyed 24,000 plants; the varmints ate the tops and then somehow dug into the ground to get at the succulent bulbs. It’s impossible to protect against an army of grasshoppers, but for a smaller invasion Ted Meredith, author of The Complete Book of Garlic, suggests that floating row covers (plastic or fabric stretched over the bed on metal hoops, available at garden supply stores) could mount a defense for a short period. Row covers retain heat and if left on too long could bring the plants to maturity too soon.
How to Harvest and Store Your Bulbs
Harvesting
    A few weeks before you dig up mature hardneck bulbs, remove the scapes so that the plant can put all of its energy into bulb development—some growers say that leaving them on can reduce the yield of a field of garlic by as much as 33 percent. Snip them off with scissors or carefully snap them off where you see a white or pinkish spot on the stem.
    Digging up the bulbs is the most fun of all, but knowing exactly when to do it can seem complicated. With all garlic, both hardneck and softneck, if you harvest too early the bulbs won’t have reached optimum growth and flavor; too late and they will have burst their wrappers and left themselves vulnerable to bacteria, which would spell doom for successful storing. The bulbs might even have separated, leaving them useless for planting, although you could eat them right away.
    Garlic should be harvested when some of the leaves are still green and some have browned, but exactly how many of each is a matter of discussion among some garlic growers. Some say half of the leaves should be brown; others say much more than half is desirable. Still others say the best time is when half of the leaves are half browned. Got it? It does get complicated, perhaps unnecessarily so. Commercial growers in California leave their softneck garlic in the ground till the tops brown and collapse, because they’re easier to harvest with no green stems. I start with the half-and-half-of-total-leaves formula and then follow my instincts. If the plant is still looking too perky, even though half the leaves seem nicely browned, I leave it in a few more days.
    Generally speaking, most softneck garlic and the Asiatics, Turbans, and Creoles—which sometimes grow a short scape (it depends on their environment or their