Problem with onions

Maidhci

A neighbour's onion patch seems to be dying away for some reason - onions are planted 5 bulbs wide in a 10 metre long raised bed and the stalks have completely toppled over at the neck in the last few days. Onions were planted from sets in early April and were growing beautifully when he last checked on them 3 or 4 days ago. Does anyone have any idea of diseases that could cause this to happen. I am concerned in case it may be air borne and might affect my crop also. I have been growing onions for many many years and have never encountered a problem such as this. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

My Potatoes

Neck rot?
Do you have photos? Have you dug up any of the plants and examined them closely?

Supercell

Ready for lifting? Some of mine are doing the same and are all pretty large. We will be self sufficient in onions for many months to come. I'm finding with the mild winter and spring that everything is further on than last year at this stage.

Maidhci

My Potatoes wrote: »

Neck rot?
Do you have photos? Have you dug up any of the plants and examined them closely?

I haven't had a look at them, he just told me the story this evening but will have a look tomorrow evening - I was more concerned to check on my own crop but will update tomorrow evening.

Maidhci

Supercell wrote: »

Ready for lifting? Some of mine are doing the same and are all pretty large. We will be self sufficient in onions for many months to come. I'm finding with the mild winter and spring that everything is further on than last year at this stage.

Thank you for the post - I very much doubt if this is the case, as far as I know we planted around the same time in early April and I don't expect to be lifting until late August as usual. As far as I know he planted Stutgarter, which may be an earlier variety, but I stopped planting these some years ago as they did not store too well for me.

Supercell

Most of mine could be harvested now, but am choosing to do it as needed in the kitchen. The stalks are green and healthy looking and many many are fallen over, maybe cats? I'm not bothered as the onions are perfect and a good size, I'd put it down to the very mild winter and spring to be honest. I planted mine last November.