You can lightly sprinkle cayenne, fresh crushed garlic, or garlic powder around the base of your plants to ward off those critters. You don't need a lot, just a sprinkling will do.
Garlic is toxic to bugs and it also helps to bacteria and harmful fungus from harming your plants. Making your own garlic spray is a great organic tool for a healthy vegetable garden.
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.
Intercropping. Planting garlic near other crops to repel pests is a smart strategy. Not only does the allium keep bugs away, but it can also keep some weeds at bay. Plus, the effects can last for weeks after the garlic is harvested.
Does garlic work as pest control? Yes, garlic works as a pest repellant, and it's typically extremely effective. Garlic repels insects in much the same way it repels some people. That is to say, the smell is unpleasant and so insects avoid it.
Organic gardeners reject synthetic, chemical and potentially harmful insecticides and herbicides in favor of natural, gentle and environmentally friendly remedies. One such remedy is a garlic spray that can help repel insects in your garden without damaging herbs, flowers or most other desirable plants.
Garlic is not only great at repelling insects above and below the ground, but is said to generally improve the health and well-being of your roses. It is an environmentally safe alternative.
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?
In early spring, tiny green shoots will emerge from the soil. Soon, they'll grow into large green stalks. If you've grown hardneck garlic in your pot, they'll produce a scape (curly flower stalk) in early summer.
Onion and garlic peels are a great way to add nutrients to your plant compost without spending any money. So don't throw away the skins, use them to create organic potassium-rich fertilizer for all your plants growing indoors or outdoors.
Garlic is a plant containing compounds that burn spiders and repel them with its pungent smell. You can create a garlic spray by mixing two cups of water with 4-6 garlic cloves.
Oil Spray: Mix 1 cup of vegetable oil with 1 tablespoon of mild liquid soap. Add 2-8 teaspoons of this mixture to 1 quart of water and spray your plants as above. The oil in this spray smothers the insects so it is effective on aphids, thrips, mites, and scale.
The pungent scent of garlic can be a headache for rodents since it is overwhelming, and they don't like it. You can place some garlic at entry points where rodents enter and if they find it, they will run away and will look for another place to infest.
The irritating and disorienting sulfur compounds in garlic repel most flying and crawling insects. It's especially helpful against annoying aphids, armyworms, beetles, caterpillars, cutworms, mites, mosquitoes, and flies.
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.
While some plants seem to draw aphids out of nowhere, there are plenty of plants that repel aphids. These include plants in the allium family, such as garlic, chives, and leeks. Marigolds, known for being able to drive away all kinds of pests, have a scent that keeps aphids far away.
Plant garlic in autumn.
Fall-to-spring is the best season for growing garlic. Just like tulips, garlic cloves planted in fall quickly develop roots, so the little plants are well established by the time cold weather stops their growth.
Break apart cloves from the bulb a few days before planting, but keep the papery husk on each individual clove. Plant cloves 4 to 8 inches apart and 2 inches deep, in their upright position (with the wider root side facing down and pointed end facing up). Plant in rows spaced 6 to 12 inches apart.
Sometimes if you have particularly wet weather then bulbs will start to rot in the ground before maturity and the tops will die off. So even the tops dying down is not a reliable sign. It's a matter of knowing your soil, your conditions and your garlic.
Of course you can touch your garlic, but it helps to tell if it's gone bad too. If the garlic is soft, when you squeeze it, toss it. Garlic should be firm and crisp.
The sulfurs contained within the garlic extract have been shown to be effective against a wide range of insects, including mosquitoes, and the lingering odor can deter mosquitoes from the area for weeks. It is thought that garlic may be an alternative mosquito repellent for humans as well.
Chemical control. The fungicides tebuconazole (Provanto Fungus Fighter Concentrate), tebuconazole with trifloxystrobin (Provanto Fungus Fighter Plus, Toprose Fungus Control & Protect), and triticonazole (Fungus Clear Ultra) are labelled for the control of rose black spot.
Garlic protect roses from not only bad bugs—it can also help prevent fungal diseases. Aphids DON'T love garlic – in fact, they hate it! Ants and snails aren't huge fans of garlic either. In addition, studies show that garlic has anti-fungal properties, which helps keep fungal diseases like blackspot at bay.
“I like to use powder in anything where you don't really want the garlic to be visible, and you want the flavor to be fully infused into whatever you're cooking,” Frisch said. That includes things like soups, stews, salad dressings and mac and cheese.