For all you garlic lovers, come and find out how easy it is to learn how to grow garlic. This is the most useful of all companion plants, is delicious in cooking and helps ward of unwanted vegetable pests.
How to grow garlic – planting
Purchase one or two clumps of garlic from your organic market. Break these into the individual cloves, but leave the white skin on each one. Choose a well drained site in partial shade and prepare your soil by adding some well rotted organic matter and volcanic rock dust.
Plant the individual cloves 10cm apart about 5 cm deep with the pointy side up.
Garlic is a great companion plant but does its best work on strawberries by giving them better flavour and bigger fruit.
Your garlic plants will grow to about 60-70cm in height and then form flowers. Pinch out the flowers. When the foliage has died back, your garlic is ready to harvest.Harvesting Garlic
Long term care
Save one or two of your bulbs for your next years planting and store your garlic for use over this time in a cool dry place.
Quick Notes
When to plant: Plant out cloves in late summer.
How many plants: 20 – 30 cloves with produce 20 or 30 each of varying size.
How long to harvest: When foliage has died back
Successive planting: Weekly during late summer will slightly stagger the harvest.
GARLIC RECIPE
While garlic is delicious to eat in all sorts of meals like pizza, or chillie, or alfredo saucegarlic is also useful in the organic veggie garden by making it into an aphid spray. Aphids attack the young shoots of a wide variety of plants.Here is how to make a simple garlic spray:
3 large cloves of crushed garlic
1 teaspoon of liquid soap
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
1 litre of water
Combine the garlic and vegetable oil and leave overnight to soak. Strain the mixture and add to the water and the liquid soap. Spray affected plants regularly.
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