My onion crops -- garlic, bulb onions and shallots -- have way more than the usual number of culls, too, with exacty the syndrome you describe. One variety of bulb onion, Milano, and one variety of shallot, Saffron, seem unaffected, but the red shallots and mid-size rocambole garlics are very badly hit. Many had one or two rotting cloves and the rest good, so we peeled, sliced and dried them before they could rot. I'm keeping my best garlic heads, for replanting, on a shelf in the living room so I can smell it should they start going bad.

I think it was all the rain that done it, almost every day in May and June. The peppers and beans loved it.

The only advice I can give is to regularly check and, more importantly, feel your garlic and use (if possible) or toss any that shows signs of getting soft or rotting.

In a previous post this year I suggested presoaking garlic prior to planting to reduce the chance of fungus or disease from being an issue if you save this year's bulbs to plant this fall (link below). It might be helpful. I've never had an issue with my garlic and have never had to presoak it so I can't say how well it works.

In regards to the allium forum being inactive, the forum is kind of slow but questions do get answered there. The posts that haven't been answered yet are posts that shouldn't even be there (they should be on the exchanges) as it's people looking for things or wanting to trade.

Rodney

Here is a link that might be useful: garlic fungus

Look up onion maggots and see if that's what you've found in your garlic. I figured out that was what had gotten into mine. I'm not sure there's a good solution other than to cull the infected ones and maybe try to plant a bit later.

Planatus -- Yes, I was wondering if it was all the rain -- we had a lot in WV too.

Rodney -- The weird thing is, this was the first year I soaked the cloves before I planted them (in water with some liquid kelp). Maybe I soaked them in a solution that was not the correct ratio of water to seaweed? Thanks for the tip on the allium forum -- I'll try posting there as well.

Sunnibel -- have looked up onion maggots, and need to still learn more. I did plant the onion bed next to the garlic bed this year -- against my better judgement, but that was the only bed ready for onions when I had limited time to plant them. Aargh! Well, it looks like complete harvesting and leaving no culls controls the maggots pretty well. There's always next year.

Yes, that's what I've read too, but I don't know if it works in my particular location. We have very large amounts of wild allium around us, another place for the maggots to breed? The maggots were here when we moved in, anyhow. So I ended up hitting on the strategy of planting later, to avoid that last mating and egg-laying of the fly. I did that last fall (as well as being very thorough in my harvesting and placing culls in the trash, not compost) and I had good stand from the garlic in spring and many fewer infested heads at harvest time.