Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilaGardener
Those holes suggest some sort of insect damage, like garlic maggot, so the problem may be more than wet weather.  |
Good point - I didn't see any culprits but on your reminder cleaned those up a bit better to make sure no small felon was burrowing inside. To my mind it is obvious insect damage and I always have some - mainly blamed on wireworms, but there was that mystery maggot on the plant I pulled earlier - much too large to be onion maggot though, and not like pics of it online, but no friend of the garlic whatever it was.
So most of those dark holes turned out to be shallow and nobody home. The worst of all, which I couldn't tell, I removed the clove from its bulb and stripped the final clove wrapper, which was damaged and dark spot. Nobody home and the clove inside perfect and unblemished. Gotta love those thick waxy clove wraps.
Will be for supper.
The key factor for the 'pink splitting' condition seems to be a serious soaking that gets through multiple wrappers. In the case of the insect damage, it would have provided a pore for moisture to get in and cause the same, soaking, bloating of the tissues, splitting of the affected layers. But the insects - maybe some random beetle grubs? seem to have chowed and moved on.