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.
Quick facts. Garlic grows best in well-drained, moisture-retentive soil with pH between 6.0 and 7.0. Plant cloves in the fall, usually one or two weeks after the first killing frost. Unless you control weeds early, they can easily overtake young garlic plants.
Benefits of Using Garlic Water Pesticide for Plants
Garlic is completely organic and safe for both plants and you. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, contact with certain toxic pesticides has a potential health risk, and using garlic water as a pesticide prevents exposure to them.
Used as a pesticide, garlic has a non-toxic mode of action for repelling target birds and insects. Garlic is presumed to be non-persistent since it is material known to rapidly degrade in the environment. EPA has received no reports of adverse effects resulting from its use.
What pests does garlic repel? Garlic spray will repel most small flying or crawling, but not burrowing, insects. In particular, garlic spray has been noted to work against aphids, mites, caterpillars, armyworms, cutworms, beetles, slugs, mosquitoes, and flies.
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.
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.
You can lightly sprinkle cayenne, fresh crushed garlic, or garlic powder around the base of your plants to ward off critters.
Garlic is planted and cared for in a manner similar to onions. A few feet of planting will provide an ample supply for most families. Plant bulbs between mid October and mid February. Purchase garlic bulbs from a nursery, and plant each clove blunt (root) end down with the top about one inch below the surface.
If left in the ground too long, the over-mature bulbs can split open, leaving them susceptible to molds and dehydration. Perhaps somewhere there are soils loose and loamy enough to enable garlic to be pulled out of the ground by the tops without tearing or breaking any stems.
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.
Garlic is great to grow alongside members of the Brassica family, like kale, kohlrabi, cabbage, and cauliflower. Garlic helps to repel cabbage loopers, cabbage maggots, cabbage worms, and Japanese beetles from vulnerable crops. 4. Potatoes.
In climates with long growing seasons, peppers and tomatoes also are good candidates for planting after garlic or onions. In cooler climates, Chinese cabbage or bok choy may be the perfect choice.
All plants take nutrients from the soil. If you plant garlic year after year, then the nutrients that it takes will be lost from the soil, which means it can no longer grow there. You need to rotate crops in one spot so that the nutrients used by one crop can be regenerated while another crop is growing.
A fresh clove of garlic placed beneath a pillow is believed to bestow a calming effect on the nervous system, thanks to the sulphurous compounds which are released from the garlic. Of course, the garlicky scent may take some getting used to, but it's surely worth it for a good night's sleep!
Unpeeled, a head of garlic can keep up to six months, while a single, unpeeled clove will last about three weeks. However, taking the skin off means that it'll go bad much faster—a peeled clove will last a week in the fridge, while chopped garlic can go bad in as little as two days.
It is possible to grow garlic from supermarket bulbs, but it's not recommended as there's a risk of virus infection. If you buy from proper planting stock, it should be virus free. And you can also choose a variety that has been bred especially for our climate.
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.
Be sure and amend the soil with well rotted manure or, preferably a quality compost. If possible spread 2 to 1 inch of compost over the entire planting area and work it into the first few inches of soil. As with most garden crops, garlic grows best when the soil pH is between 6 and 7.
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.
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.
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.