Smith Daniel

Elephant garlic, coming back from the corms rather than cloves.  The corms are the dime sized, hard, pointy brown offsets that the plant produces to lay dormant until after the main bulb dies.  They can take years for soil life to break down the hard shell, letting the embryo inside absorb water and start to grow.  The bigger ones in your picture are called rounds.  Basically they grew from the embryo that was from a corm but aren't yet old enough to split into cloves, so they form a round, single clove.  Hence the name round.  You can produce the same thing with garlic, garlic rounds, by planting bulbils from hardneck garlic scapes rather than cloves.  The first year they grow into rounds, then when they have enough energy in the second (or third season if conditions aren't favorable in the second season) they will form a bulb with cloves.

Is there any kind of herbicide or bovine medicine that could be in bagged cow manure that causes stunted growth in plants?  I put a few bags on each garden bed along with home made compost and work them in every spring.  If the bag that ended up getting worked into that end of the bed was contaminated it would explain the stunted growth from day one.  Or run off from some kind of spring weed and feed or herbicide used on the other side of the fence from that end of the bed.  I've grown in this exact spot, doing the exact same things for years and this was a first.  If it was a virus it would have had to infect them as seedlings and I would have expected it to spread to the other plants as the season went on. If it was a root feeding nematode or beetle larvae I would expect them to have spread from plant to plant as well.

Here's a pic of the soil without the weeds (when planting the squash bed to hardy garlic).  I've been improving it for years

L. Johnson wrote:Did you look at the roots? Sometimes the soil conditions in one spot just aren't appropriate. Maybe there was a rock blocking root growth. Maybe that spot of soil was nutrient deficient. Maybe those seeds were as you suggest, not good in the genes.

Were they shaded out? Was water equally available?

There are tons of possibilities. Herbicide and other contaminants included.

I did not look at the roots, I just cut everything at soil level, weeded the bed and planted hardneck garlic.  I've gardened in the same spot since 2010.  The first few years I tilled the soil but had the garden at ground level. Since 2017 it has been more of a raised bed with dug out pathways between the planting areas.  So no rocks.  I add cow manure and compost every spring, fork it in and plant my spring vegetables. So I wouldn't expect it to be nutrient deficit.  I picked this spot for the garden when I moved in because it gets no shade, it is literally the sunniest spot on the property. The whole area receives water via a sprinkler.

William Bronson wrote:Welcome tp Permies!
I am not very knowledgeable about squash or watermelons, but hopefully someone who is will chime in.
How is the light along the property line?
Is there a fence casting shade?

There is a chain link fence and a grass lawn on the other side.  It doesn't cast shade on the garden.  I chose this spot to put my garden when I bought the property because it is the sunniest spot on my property.

Last year in one of my garden beds I had two plants runt out and produce tiny fruit. One was a sugar baby watermelon and the other was a Waltham butternut squash. All of the other plants of both types that I grew were normal in growth and fruit size. It was just these two individual plants that were stunted and produced stunted fruits.  If it had just been one plant of one species I would have just assumed that the one seed that grew into that plant had lost the genetic lottery, but two different plants of two different species growing within feet of eachother at the same end of a bed having the same genetic issue is unlikely.  I've used the same beds for years and never had this issue.  In the spring I amended all of the beds with the same compost and had automatic watering all season long.  Towards the end of the season I let weeding get away from me (essential worker picking up alot of extra shifts due to the pandemic) but that didn't cause any of the other plants to produce tiny fruit.  Both plants struggled all season, growing slowly and with smaller stems, flowers and leaves than their fellows growing just feet away.  The watermelon produced one tiny fruit and the squash produced four small fruit.  I didn't bother with harvesting the watermelon but I did harvest the tiny squash with the rest of the normal sized squash. I have eaten two of the tiny squash so far.  They were lacking in sugar (the normal squash from the rest of the plants are sweet) but it did contain what appear to be viable seeds.  The seeds are smaller, about 1/3rd of the size of the seeds from the unaffected plants, however.  I saved them separately to see if the plant was just a dwarf but thinking about that watermelon being so tiny makes me wonder if they were hit by some kind of herbicide that affects plants growth via hormone disruption.  The bed is just a couple of feet away from the property line.  Any ideas?