Tulbaghia 'Ashanti'

Summary

UC Davis is located in Davis, California, this site has a silty clay loam soil and plants are irrigated with potable water. More information about the field sites is located in the Nuts & Bolts section.

This small cultivar of society garlic has softer, slightly blue-gray tinged foliage and the flowers are a paler lavender color than the species. Plants started off the season healthy and full of blooms. It was rated very good in all quality categories on all irrigation treatments through July (Table 18a).  Trials staff did not observe any of the garlic fragrance commonly associated with Tulbaghia when removing spent flower heads in the early spring or collecting growth data. Some of the typical garlicky aroma was noticed when removing the plants in October, though our observation is that this cultivar is less pungent than T. violacea. Beginning in August, Overall Appearance ratings began to slip, especially on the Low irrigation level and by September all treatment levels had fallen to just acceptable or below (Table18a).  The main detriment to this plant’s appearance is a side effect of its incredible floriferousness: without deadheading, there are just too many dead flower stalks mixed in with the living ones, which mars the appearance of the plants. Also, as the season progressed, foliage around the perimeter began to die leaving a ring of yellowed leaves at the base.  These two factors contributed to the low scores in September and October which brought the yearly average appearance score down to good, rather than the very good-to-excellent level at which plants began the season. None of these ratings nor the growth were affected by irrigation level, so we recommend irrigation according the WUCOLS Low Category.

Fall Open House participants almost universally complained of the detrimental aspect of the dead flower stalks and that it would need “judicious pruning”.

Growth and Quality Data

Click Here for Complete Data Set