Some great companion plants for garlic include cabbage, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, spinach, beets, and chamomile. These plants complement each other's growth and help deter pests.
Garlic is one of the best companion plants for flowers because it is a natural pest repellent. For example, rose pests hate the smell of garlic! Insects like aphids, ants, mites, snails, and even blackspot fungi will avoid the strong scent of garlic. Garlic can also deter pests away from geraniums.
Garlic is a great companion for tomato plants because it can discourage spider mites when planted beside tomato plants. These strongly scented plants can also repel common flying pest insects.
We use buckwheat before garlic. It will deter weed growth and add lots of organic matter to the soil. Planted early enough in the spring it is possible to get two crops out of one seeding. Simply let the buckwheat go to seed and mature fully and knock it down and work it lightly into the soil.
By cutting off the scape you are asking the plant to send all of it's energy in to increasing the bulb size, rather than in putting energy toward flowers and seed. Since the bulb is what we eat, we recommend cutting the scape.
Curing bulbs simply involves drying the garlic in a dry, warm, dark, and ventilated area for a few weeks. Select your largest bulbs when saving garlic stock for planting the following year. Curing the garlic bulbs properly is crucial to storing garlic for planting.
Garlic gets along with most plants, but it should not be grown near asparagus, peas, beans, sage, parsley and strawberries, because it will stunt their growth. Companion Planting – Truth or Myth?
Use garlic to deter slugs
A home-made garlic spray can be effective in deterring slugs and snails from your plants, but only if you spray your plants regularly. Take two full bulbs of garlic and add them a saucepan containing two litres of water.
Although it seems silly, this simple garden trick really works. The baking soda absorbs into the soil and lowers its acidity levels giving you tomatoes that are more sweet than tart.
Underplanting fruit trees with garlic helps the tree repel pests such as fruit tree bore, aphids and mites. It is also thought that the tree roots absorb sulfur produced by the garlic, making the tree more resistant to fungus, mold and black spot. Consider planting garlic under your fruit tree this fall.
One bulb of garlic when broken into cloves and planted can reap 10-20 bulbs harvested. Not only for keen gardeners with lots of garden space, garlic can be easily planted in a pot on a patio or even a doorstep!
5) Companion planting: Garlic is a great companion plant since it's a natural pest and fungus deterrent. Garlic gets along with just about everything but beans and peas. Plant rows of garlic in between rows of other vegetable plants for the best results.
Spinach is one of the few vegetables that match garlic's winter hardiness, so they make natural partners for the winter garden. I've tried planting spinach between double rows of garlic in the fall, and it worked well enough for the garlic, but not for the spinach, which needed more winter protection.
Coffee grounds have been recommended in the past as an organic method to keep slugs and snails out of your flower and vegetable beds. Grounds will repel slugs, but the USDA research team confirms that a caffeine solution is more effective.
Leave the citrus halves near vulnerable plants — the slugs usually hop off the hostas and hustle over to investigate this new offering. Check your citrus traps about once a day so slugs don't have a chance to drift back onto your plants. Throw spent rinds in your compost pile, but remove the slugs first!
A spray bottle filled with plain white vinegar is a great cure for slugs that aren't on plants. An extremely effective mollusk dissolver, vinegar is also an herbicide-so don't spritz the salvia. 15) Or Garlic.
Garlic is the most potent of all Alliums and is poisonous to most species including dogs, cats, cattle, horses, birds, reptiles, sheep, and goats. It is about 5 times more toxic than onions or leeks.
Garlic makes a powerful natural insect repellent. Garlic can be used to repel a variety of crawling and flying insects, including mosquitoes,” according to Patrick Parker , SavATree Plant Health Care Program Director.
Garlic is naturally rich in sulphur which is toxic to a range of leaf sucking and chewing pests such as aphids, whitefly and looper caterpillars (that feed on cabbages).
Fertilize garlic in the early spring by side dressing or broadcasting with blood meal, pelleted chicken manure or a synthetic source of nitrogen. Just before the bulbs begin to swell in response to lengthening daylight (usually early May), fertilize lightly one more time.
Cutting a garlic clove breaks its cells and releases stored enzymes that react with oxygen. That triggers healthy sulfide compounds, such as allicin, to form. Letting the chopped garlic stand for 10 to 15 minutes before cooking allows the compounds to fully develop before heat inactivates the enzymes.
The key to proper curing is providing good air circulation between the bulbs. Don't spread them out in the sun. Garlic is susceptible to sunburn and can literally cook under the sun, which deteriorates flavor. So you want to minimize the amount of direct sunlight it gets during the curing process.