What’s going on with my garlic

I have grown garlic for many years, but this year something went wrong, and I can’t figure out what it is. A lot of the bulbs come up rotten, and the rest are not growing well. They were planted in October, so they should be ready and they are not. The soft necks have dead leaves and the hard necks haven’t set any scapes like they usually do. The only difference from previous years, is that they are in a new bed by themselves instead of surrounding other plants like I usually do. I do find a few nice heads, but very few.
I have attacked pictures.

That doesn't look good Ulla. Are these grown from saved bulbs, or new stock?

Nancy Reading wrote:That doesn't look good Ulla. Are these grown from saved bulbs, or new stock?

It was new certified disease free organic stock that I bought, since I didn’t grow enough last year to last us until the next harvest. On the right side it’s Music and on the left Spanish Roja which is a hard neck. I have bought from the same company before without problems.
The soil is a mix of compost, partly composted mulch and compost tea. They only got watered from below until March when we turned on sprinklers to cover a larger area. When I first noticed the problems, I had my husband change back to below drip watering only.

It seems like only a few of them have the genetics to survive in this new bed. Don't eat any of the survivors, use them as your starting stock for next year after two or so years, everything will be healthy looking.

My garlic was strange this year although not as bad as that. No scapes ever came up, but the leaves were dying and they were big so I went ahead and harvested them. But the scapes usually always come up before I harvest. But we have had a lot of rain this year. Have you? Maybe that’s why they are soggy? Just an idea. I hope you’re able to get some better answers.

Roxanne Oguin wrote:My garlic was strange this year although not as bad as that. No scapes ever came up, but the leaves were dying and they were big so I went ahead and harvested them. But the scapes usually always come up before I harvest. But we have had a lot of rain this year. Have you? Maybe that’s why they are soggy? Just an idea. I hope you’re able to get some better answers.

Yesterday we pulled all of the soft neck garlic, but when we got to the hard necks, they didn’t have the same problems. No scapes, but clear heads forming. The soft necks looked like leeks when we cut them up.
We thinned out the hard necks since I suspected over watering (they have drip irrigation, but because of my sunflowers, my husband has used the sprinklers, which then also has hit the garlic).
I think I know what went wrong.
1. I forgot that the compost didn’t have a lot of nitrogen and garlic are heavy feeders. I have given the hard necks a good feed of liquid fertilizer now.
2. We planted them too close together.
3. Placement. This garden bed doesn’t get as much sunlight as the rest of the yard does. Next year I will plant garlic in a spot with more sunshine.
4. I need to forget that people tell you to grow soft necks when you are down south. I have know for the last 5 years that the hard necks perform much better here. I don’t know why, but I am not planting soft necks again. Not just because of this, but also because my stored soft necks expired around Christmas, but the hard necks we have left, are still good now over a year later.
I am in a few food preservation groups on FB, and I remembered that one of the other women didn’t cure her garlics, but instead just cleaned them, put them in the food processor and then froze it all in small portions. This was what we ended up doing, since cutting shows that they all looked like leeks inside. No cloves were developed. Half we froze in small silicone molds, and the rest goes into my freeze dryer to make garlic powder. Because they didn’t cure, we were able to use part of the stalk too, so we ended up with 5 full freeze drying trays and one large tray with the molds.
I am grateful that we didn’t loose all of it, and I have learned a lot from it too. Since learning is good, I am happy.

I don't know what the problem is or the cure, but I've had similar issues for years with SOME of my garlic. I am in a very different climate, West Virginia. Harvesting earlier helped--here I harvest the last week of June; this year the elephant garlic made scapes a month ago and I've begun pulling them, but the regular garlic I just cut the scapes a couple days ago. So they might be late this year. I want to note that I only grow hardnecks, tho I've read the softnecks supposedly keep better--so I found that one comment interesting!--and despite softnecks being braidable, because I found the softnecks more susceptible to whatever it is that causes some to rot.

I'm Forwarding information on garlic that may be helpful. Table of contents to choose but the whole article is interesting, informative and not very long.

https://www.gardenmyths.com/leek-moth-garlic-identification-prevention-control/