Round our way gardeners, including me, scatter the garlic bed with woodashes to sweeten the soil and deter onion/garlic worms.
I also got rust, this year for the first time, on my garlic - a cold wet spring is what did it, so 've been reading up on it and what to do about it. It seems that it is important to destroy the affected materials so that the spores don't go back into the soil, the fungal spores have a long life apparently.
Like the tip on comfry leaves I'll give that a go.
