What’s eating my alliums?

My allium foliage is looking really bad at the moment, yellow and wilting. I thought it might be white rot so dug one out today to have a look. The bulb was completely rotten and infested by these little white insects. What are they? Can I save the rest? Don’t know if they’re the cause or just there coincidentally.. So gutted!:mad:

Sorry for the bad pic!

They don’t look like images of bulb mites, they seem long, white, lots of legs, almost like centipedes.

I’ve done some ‘digging’ on google pardon the pun :pac: and found this. My best guess is that it looks like they could be thrips larvae, never heard of them. Might be useful for anyone else to know in case you ever come across them.



Trying to get nematodes now for them, seems to be impossible to source like everything else at the moment! Bought some biological control from ‘fruit hill farm’ hopefully not too late to stop the damage!

The Continental Op

The problem here is which came first the rot or the critters?

I'd strongly suspect its Onion white rot which is very common. Once you have it you really can't get rid of it.

That’s what I was wondering myself. I’ve dug a few up, that pic above was the worst one, the rest had some outer brown rot and covered in the bugs, no white fuzz or black dots of white rot so I’m not sure.

Suppose it’s one of the drawbacks of buying organic bulbs, they’ve no protection from disease!:(

The Continental Op

These weren't overwintering Japanese onions were they? Onion White Rot on them shows up my May.

No they’re ornamental alliums Purple Sensation. Well if it’s white rot that’ll be the end of them :mad:. I’ll just have to wait it out a bit to see what happens to them. No point removing now, if it’s in the soil now there’s feck all l can do about it. :rolleyes: I’m as well to enjoy the blossoms for a while!

PeadarOBriain

I lost quite a lot in f alliums this year, Sturon onion and garlic. Just went yellow, wilted and died. Is it the weather this year? Are others loosing alliums?