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.
Chamomile can help improve the flavor of garlic. Another herb that pairs well with garlic is rue. Rue is a strongly scented herb known to keep flies and maggots away, so it can help prevent maggots from attacking your plants. Yarrow and summer savory will improve the health and production of garlic.
They are antagonistic to some garden plants because of chemical or flavor interactions. Avoid planting onions and garlic near beans, peas, sage and asparagus.
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.
7. Tomatoes. Plant a border of garlic alongside your tomato row to deter spider mites and aphids, and it can also improve the flavour of the fruits. Garlic also grows well with other members of the Nightshade family like peppers and eggplant, all of which are more heat loving than garlic.
Garlic grows best in well-drained, moisture-retentive soil with pH between 6.0 and 7.0. Improve your soil's organic matter content by adding well-rotted manure or compost in spring or fall. Do not use fresh manure as it may contain harmful bacteria and may increase weed problems.
At the end of September, I planted my garlic cloves on the top of the row beds. It is the cover crop I plant ahead of garlic to reduce the competition from winter annual weeds and to provide a protective winter mulch.
Planting Garlic
Plant cloves 3" to 4" deep, orienting them so the pointy ends face up. Water gently to settle the soil, and then cover the bed with a 4" to 6" layer of straw. Even as air temperatures drop, the soil will stay warm enough for the newly planted cloves to establish roots before the ground freezes.
Planting onions and garlic together won't have a drastic impact on either crop but it will have a big impact on those around them as like garlic, onions, chives and other members of the allium family repel many mites and grubs. Although garlic has many friends, it also has a few enemies.
Too close, garlic plants will compete with each other, to their detriment. Their roots compete for the same, finite nutrients. Leaves overlap, competing for sunlight.
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.
Garlic grows best in deep, well-drained soil high in organic matter. It does not grow well in soils that are high in clay or compacted. Full sun: requires direct light at least 6 hours/day; prefers 8 - 10 hours/day.
Garlic has a better survival rate when mulch is applied. Mulch insulates and prevents the freezing/thawing action which can heave cloves out of the ground. If snow cover can be assured, that can be adequate mulch, but we would still recommend mulch to protect the garlic.
Garlic competes poorly with weeds, and several studies have shown that mulching garlic through winter with straw or coarsely chopped leaves leads to bigger and better yields. Winter mulch helps keep nutrients in the soil from leaching away, and also can help buffer little plants from strong winds.
Garlic, like potatoes, is multiplied by vegetative reproduction rather than by sexual reproduction (seeds). Individual garlic cloves are planted and they each produce a bulb in which the cloves all have the same genetic makeup as the original clove.
Fertilize garlic in the early spring by side dressing or broadcasting with blood meal, pelleted chicken manure or a synthetic source of nitrogen.
Baking soda is considered a "significant killer" of bacterial suspensions and has been shown to significantly decrease the numbers of viable bacterial cells. This mixture provides a nutritional boost for our garlic and acts as an effective at killing bacteria and mold that might be hidden on the garlic cloves.
Head growth starts when the soil temperature is around 60° F, and ends when the soil reaches 90° F. The key to this step is to keep your garlic's soil cool for as long as possible until it is ready for harvest. This will give it the longest time possible to develop large heads.
Unnecessary additives that are not taken up by plants — including Epsom salt — can contaminate ground water. Adding Epsom salt to the soil tomatoes are growing in can actually promote blossom-end rot, a truly disappointing garden woe. The tomatoes start to bear fruit and then rot on the bottom.
Unfortunately, the only thing you can do is avoid growing garlic in the same place for three years; there's no cure for rust. Garlic can also be affected by white rot, which decays the roots and eventually the bulb. Again there is no cure apart from crop rotation.
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.