Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Grubbypaws on September 14, 2018, 12:07
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Last year my gooseberry cordons were overrun by sawfly. Having read that they find the gooseberry plants by smell I under planted them with garlic. This year I haven’t seen a single sawfly. OK it may be because of the weather this summer but I want to continue the experiment.
My question. I have just left the bulbs in the ground and not harvested them. Will they grow again next year or should I replant?
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They will grow again, in fact they're probably already thinking about peeking through the soil in the next few weeks.
If you decide to harvest them next year the results could be interesting and a bit unpredictable, because each clove will be trying to grow into a complete bulb without actually having the room to do so. :ohmy:
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Cheers JayG. I am growing them for their scent not the bulbs so that sounds great. Honest opinion. Do you think the garlic worked or was it just a bad year for sawfly? Last year I spent hours squishing them and had a poor harvest. This year I honestly havent seen a single one :lol:
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I honestly don't know - there are dozens of companion planting suggestions 'out there' which rely on scent-masking to fool the pest - they can't ever be 100% effective because they can't rule out the element of chance that the pest just gets lucky (and some pests only need one chance to breed and wreak havoc!)
If gooseberry sawflies are actually repelled rather than just distracted by the smell of garlic that could be a different story, but it's all supposition on my part.
Don't forget to let us know what happens next year anyway! ;)
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I think it was just a bad year for the sawfly. I can't think why any animal or insect would be put off by garlic. I tried to keep mice away from my peas and beans by soaking them in garlic solution, but it made no difference.
This year my brassica haven't suffered from cabbage white attack, so maybe just an bad season for caterpillars in general due to the Beast from the east followed by the hot spell.
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I think the theory is that the smell of the garlic swamps the smell of the gooseberry plants and the sawfly go elsewhere. Probably rubbish but after hours picking them off and squashing them last year anything was worth a go!!!
No cabbage whitefly! Envy; time not spent squishing sadly has been spent squishing cabbage white caterpillars :wacko: