Thank goodness for garlic... Part One

It's that time of year again. Mid-winter. The time when you look around desperately for something to do in the garden and can't find anything. Christmas kept you occupied for a bit so you didn't have to think about it, but now...

So thank goodness for garlic. Garlic actually wants to be planted in winter. It needs a while in cold conditions in order to start growing. If you're late, you can always stick it in the fridge for a few weeks before you plant, but what gardener would want to pass up on the chance of having something that really, really wants to be sown in January?

January may seem a bit late. The advice on when to sow that you'll find in the gardening books and websites ranges from late October to early spring. But the BBC Gardener's World website says November to January, and that's good enough for me.

I'm sowing in seed trays for now, and will transfer the plants to the containers later on. The Gardener's World website explains how (follow the link above) - or if you speak Italian try a great blog that I've just come across Un pugno di terra e un seme (which translates as A fistful of soil and a seed).

I shall be using the garlic mainly as companion plants to deter pests - harvesting is a lower priority. Garlic supposed to deter just about anything - aphids, red spider mite, colorado beetle, and boring insects (no, not uninteresting ones, but the type that eat into woody stems and branches). You name it and someone will suggest garlic as a remedy. It's also supposed to prevent a variety of diseases - peach leaf curl, apple scab, sooty mold, black spot... All sources however, warn against planting it near peas, beans and other legumes - annoyingly without explaining why. It might possibly be because the antibiotic properties kill off the bacteria which fix the nitrogen produced by legumes in the soil. But I'm hypothesising wildly there. Does anyone know?

Even if you don't want to grow garlic around your plants, you can buy some and use it as a home-made anti-fungal spray. Crush or blend the cloves from three large heads of garlic into about half a litre of water. Leave it to stand and then strain the bits out (or they'll clog up the tube of your spray). Breaking up the tissues of the garlic during the crushing releases a chemical substance called allicin which has antibiotic and anti-fungal properties. I've used it regularly and it seems to work. Not recommended, however, for houseplants. It works all right, but the smell does linger...

Garlic oil is also recommended as a deterrent for slugs and snails. That's one problem you don't get on a balcony, so I can't vouch for whether it works, but it would be worth a try.

As I'm not primarily growing the garlic as a crop, I didn't bother too much about the quality of the cloves, and just stuck in some which I got from the supermarket. If you do this though, make sure that you use organically grown garlic, as otherwise it may have been treated with chemicals expressly to stop it germinating. Another reason for the "lazy" choice is that there's nowhere around here that I can get seed garlic, and my first attempts at sourcing it through the internet only came up with places which either didn't deliver to Europe or only sold it in quantities that were far too large for the balcony.

However, I've now found The Garlic Farm which sells everything you could possibly think of related to garlic, and which has gone firmly onto my list of places to visit the next time I'm on the Isle of Wight. As my last visit was forty-five years ago, a new trip is long overdue. They sell lots of varieties of seed garlic - and will deliver to Europe - and browsing their site has made me think I might just invest in some of the good stuff. Especially as it seems that last year there was a garlic shortage and prices sky-rocketed. Why? Because apparently, a lot of the garlic we eat comes from China, and fears of bird 'flu there meant that domestic supplies were hoarded. No, as far as I know there's no evidence that garlic protects against bird 'flu, but a lot of Chinese seem convinced it does.

I don't know whether the situation will be repeated in 2011 or not, but the thought of the carbon footprint that the garlic I'm using might have clocked up is quite enough to convince me that growing my own might not be a bad idea. And until then, I shall certainly be looking at the labels to make sure that what I buy comes from slightly nearer home - as I said, the stuff that I've planted is organic, and though the packaging doesn't state the origin, it does say that the cultivation methods conformed to the EU regulation 2092/91 which suggests that it comes from slightly nearer home than China, at least.

But if I'm going to grow my own, what varieties will I choose? The Garlic Farm's list had be hopping from one foot to the other like a child in a sweetshop. Should I go for softneck garlic, the type you normally find in the supermarket, which is easy to grow and store - or hardneck garlic, which tastes better? What about trying elephant garlic, with it's huge sweeter tasting cloves? Or should I just go for the Garlic Lover's Seed Selection which will give me nine different varieties and a hundred plants...

A hundred plants. Erm... wasn't that the quantity I didn't reckon I could cope with on the balcony? And aren't even the air miles between the Isle of Wight and Milan a bit exaggerated? It may not be China, but it's hardly local produce.

There are times when trying to live sustainably can be very difficult ...

Sacrificial Mint??

If there's one thing that has done well for me this year, it's these little peppers. They were an impulse buy - I found them as plug plants in a supermarket and just threw them into the trolley along with some tomatoes that I really wanted.

They weren't quite what I expected. I have to admit to having looked too quickly at the label and thought I was buying big, sweet peppers. But when I got home and read it properly - no, they were small, hot peppers.

Now, we don't usually like hot peppers, so I was more interested in them for their ornamental value than anything else. And have they paid off. They've been green and glossy all summer and are now covered in bright red fruit, which looks great against the green walls of the flat.

And unlike virtually everything else I've grown, they've not been touched by sap sucking insects or red spider mite this year. Apart from a bit of caterpillar damage, they're just about the healthiest plants I've got.

Is that because the bugs don't like them? No. These two plants came in a group of four, and the other two went on the front balcony with the tomatoes. And the insects just dived in and munched. They didn't last much past flowering.

So why the difference? The only thing I can point to is this.

Mint, growing at the bottom of the peppers. Or at least, it was.

Back in the summer I wrote a post on companion planting. Some plants will repel insects, thus protecting any other plants growing nearby. Mint is supposed to be one of them.

Now, I ask you - does this look like a plant that has repelled insects? Huh - they've had a feast.

Rather than repelling the insects, it seems to have acted as a sacrificial plant. They've enjoyed the mint so much (and believe me, a while back there was a lot more of it) that they've left the peppers alone.

Well, that's the theory. I can't find confirmation anywhere that mint should attract pests. Every website I've found so far solemnly assures me that insects can't bear it. They've clearly never met ours.

In any case, I know what's going to be growing between all my other plants next year. it's going to be tomatoes and mint, surfinia and mint, roses and mint, hollyhocks and mint, beans and mint, potatoes and mint, honesty and mint, jerusalem artichokes and mint, zinnia and mint, peas and mint, black-eyed Susans and mint, lettuce and mint, morning glory and mint, sunflowers and mint, delphiniums and mint, marigolds and mint, cosmos and mint, calendula and mint, poppies and mint, rosemary and mint, antirrhinums and mint, radishes and mint, alyssum and mint ....

So should you hear people complaining of a mint shortage in North Italy around about the beginning of May 2011, please don't tell ...

Companion Planting

Up to this year, I've always kept my three balconies separate as far as use was concerned. At home the front balcony (the one I look out on and sit on) was for plants in flower, while the back was the herb garden (just outside the kitchen door) and the nursery where I had the seedlings and the cuttings, plus the perennials not currently flowering - chrysanthemums in the spring and summer for instance. Then, my office balcony had a few flowers right in front of the window, but tucked away around the corner (well out of sight of my clients - now why?) was my vegetable garden, with its beans and courgettes and tomatoes.

This year though, I've changed. Nine times out of ten in the past, the veg and the herbs didn't make it - they were decimated by whitefly and red spider mite before they came anywhere near harvest. So this year I've changed tack - I'm companion planting.

The idea behind companion planting is simple. Growing certain plants near others improves the chances of the second group doing well. Why? Several reasons ...

Firstly, some plants will protect others from pests, diseases and environmental factors. So if you pop those in amongst others which are susceptible to those problems, they'll have some degree of protection. So here for example, I've got marigolds next to my tomatoes. Marigolds give off a smell which whitefly can't abide. So in avoiding the marigolds, they'll also have to stay away from the tomatoes. At the same time, I've got peppers planted by the tomatoes. The strong sun hasn't hit here yet this year, but when it does, the tomatoes will shelter them and provide humidity. There's some garlic in there too, as there is around my roses, to repel aphids.

Then there are plants which are supposed to benefit the growth and flavour of others - like basil for tomatoes. That's in there too but it's not quite big enough to see in the photo. A pity that you can't grow mozzarella - I'd have a complete caprese in one container :)

Some plants will attract beneficial insects. For example, marigolds (yes, they crop up all the time) attract hoverflies , and hoverfly larvae like to munch away on aphids.

And finally, there are the sacrificial plants. This one's sad. You put in something that you know is irresistible to a particular pest, in the hope that it will leave the other plants, which you want to save, alone. There are a couple of nasturtiums tucked in with the roses too to attract aphids.

Why bother? Because every pest that can be deterred with another plant is one that doesn't have to be squirted with some foul, polluting chemical.

It's not all good news of course. Some of the worst pests don't seem to respond to companion planting at all - and, as every summer, my big fear is red spider mite. I've yet to find a plant that will repel it, and all those marigolds are actually going to attract it. And there's always the fear that if you attract them to sacrificial plants, they'll spread. Oh, my poor tomatoes.

And then there are the incompatibles. Just as some plants seem to like being together,and thrive, others seem to hate each other and do badly. Keep your onions away from your peas and beans for example and your tomatoes away from your potatoes. Not always easy if you're gardening in a small space like a balcony.

So what do you grow with what and what should you avoid planting together? You'll find loads of lists on the web - try these Google searches for instance Companion plants and Companion planting. Or if you have a specific plant in mind, just add it to the search box.

But whatever you search for, if you do find a plant that will repel the dreaded RSM, please, please let me know ...