A few garlic, left out of the row cover leek moth protection tent, to see if the moths do arrive. I haven’t seen their eggs, or the moths, in person, just the busy boring larva. The eggs are apparently tiny and laid singly on the leaves, so hard to spot. I check daily. Pretty sure these brave guys, ready to take one for the team, are so far leek moth free.
leek moth
Garlic revealed
For the first time after years and years of growing garlic, they’ve been under row cover since planting in fall, protection from a repeat of last year’s surprise invasion of the leek moth. No longer the one crop that every garden pest, from deer-sized to flea beetle, seemed to studiously ignore. I covered them right after planting so I wouldn’t have to muck about in the marshy field in April before it dried out, and loosened it up earlier this month.
Today, a full day of unfiltered sun. Leek moths are out and about at night, so the garlic should be safe even if the moths are in the neighborhood. The plants look fine, healthy and growing quite fast, though the leaves were a bit bent at first by pushing up against the cover. Cover went back on late in the afternoon. Better that than be bored (by leek moths).
Leek moth invasion update!
Here we are, a week after leek moths invaded the garlic, gazing at a healthy scape. If you’re not familiar, scapes are the curling tips that emerge as the garlic gets close to harvest. They’re also clearly a favorite target of the moth larvae: they chew their way in and start tunneling down. All of the attacked scapes had to be snapped off, right as they were emerging. Happily, many also survived. Snipped when tender—they get woody if left too long—scapes are filled with a full, delicious garlic flavor, a preview of the garlic to come. Let your imagination decide how to use them! (It’s also said that removing the scapes directs more plant energy to making the bulbs bigger, though I haven’t seen that for myself.) As for the bulbs and the leek moths, this is my first encounter, so we’ll only know for sure if all that hand-picking and scape snipping worked when the garlic comes out next month.
Attack of the leek moth
Checking for scapes today, only a couple of days after the last all-good garlic check-in, and found absolute carnage thanks to a leek moth invasion. For years, I’ve heard about these voracious leaf devourers ravaging alliums—garlic, onions, leeks—in the general region, but they’d never shown up here. Until now. After hours of hand picking and squishing, the situation may be somewhat under control.
FACT-FINDING: I did a bit of quick research to get the bigger picture. Leek moths (Acrolepiopsis assectella) are nocturnal, operating in full darkness. They overwinter in plant debris, emerge and mate when the temperature gets up to around 50°F/10°C. There are usually three generations a year, around here in mid-May, June and July. The first generation grows up (fast, in around 3 weeks) and starts laying another round, and so on.T hat means, in unusually warm or cold weather, there could be more generations per year, or less. Each female has around 100 eggs, lays them singly not in clusters, usually on the underside of leaves near the base of the plant (but, naturally, look EVERYWHERE!). There’s of course lots more, but that’s what I need to know for veg protection—garlic under row cover (and it would be pretty safe to uncover them during the day).