Just wondering if anyone has had trouble with latent virus, showing up in garlic after a bad summer?
We had late frosts, cold wet July and now two weeks of heat in August, and today I went to pull the earlier porcelains and found that all my Chesnok Red plants have yellow streaks on all their leaves that look like pictures of yellow dwarf or mosaic virus.. I decided to pull them and OMG the bulbs are as small as my thumb.
These came from regular sized bulbs I grew last year from a bulb of seed I bought, and seemed healthy and for sure normal size.
The Music planted next to them in the same bed have no spots on the leaves and the bulbs although smaller than hoped for are more or less normal I guess for the bad time they had...(worst weather on record).
One row of another variety next to the Chesnok also had affected leaves and there are leaf hoppers around and whatnot, so I pulled everything that looks infected and bagged it foliage and all for the moment till I figure out how to dispose of it. Then I also noticed that some of the rounds I harvested today also have streaky looking leaves and may have been infected by insect spread?... or maybe they also had something latent, that became symptomatic just in the past few days but didn't affect their growth or size, unlike the parent seed...
This has been a pesty year and there are various leaf miners and others that could affect garlic or other alliums and maybe look like virus but is not? Wishful thinking maybe. Yes I am confused.
What would you do? Cull everything with any sign of a yellow streak on the leaf? I don't want to lose my rounds for seed stock if there's any way to salvage. If I cut the leaves off before they cure would that help, possibly? Does it matter if a latent virus is there, should I just accept that these plants may go down hard when they're stressed?