Growing garlic

This is a story about my husband Larry's garden. Larry is an incredible gardener. He's been gardening since he was 5 years old, and he started a vegetable garden in our back yard as soon as we moved into our house in April, 1986. Eventually I asked him to please make the garden organic, and he did.

A number of years ago, a friend who also had a vegetable garden moved away, and before she left she dug up some of the garlic from her garden and gave a head to each of her friends. Some people ate theirs, but Larry planted his, and every year he harvested a few heads of garlic and used them in salad dressing, remembering to be grateful to the friend who moved away. He could have grown them outside the garden fence, because deer don't like garlic, but he kept them inside the fence with the other vegetables. They didn't need full sun, which was convenient.

Meanwhile, I was washing and cooking the collards, kale and broccoli that he brought in from his vegetable garden on summer days (among many other vegetables), and I was getting frustrated with the aphids. Aphids are tiny soft-bodied insects that live in large colonies, and the ones I found on these veggies were gray. I could wipe them off of flat leaves, but it was harder to wipe them off the curly kale leaves and impossible to wipe them off the broccoli florets. I complained, but I didn't want pesticides sprayed on the vegetable garden, so for a while we were at a loss as to what to do.

Then one day Larry read that aphids don't like garlic. He divided up the small clump of garlic plants growing in his garden and put one on either side of every broccoli, collard and kale plant (see first photo). The garlic and the other vegetables happily grew together, and just as he had hoped, there were no more aphids on the vegetables. In the middle of the summer the garlic leaves die back (and the plants temporarily go dormant); that is the time to harvest the heads of garlic. Larry now harvests enough garlic to last us for a year--he keeps the heads on a tray in our basement, which is cool and dry and fairly dark for most of the year. We make it last by choosing any cloves that look like they are starting to sprout and using them first. He still has loads of garlic plants left in the ground to protect next year's vegetables from aphids, and the following spring he digs up buckets of garlic plants to give away to friends who might want to grow some. And armloads of garlic plants even end up in the compost pile (see second photo)!

A few years ago we heard about a vegetable called garlic scapes (see third photo). They are the stalk that the garlic plant sends up every year around Memorial Day, which produces miniature garlic bulblets that drop off into the soil. These are not flowers. They are another way for the plant to reproduce. As the stalks grow, they start to bend (see fourth photo). Some stalks bend into a loop and some just curve, but as soon as they start to bend they should be harvested and eaten. In fact, they should be cut off even if you don't want to eat them, since the plant will expend energy to grow and mature the bulblets, and the real, underground garlic cloves will therefore be smaller if you don't remove the scapes. We usually cut them into inch-long pieces (see fifth photo) and saute them in butter or olive oil and just eat them, but there are other recipes available. Harvest scapes as soon as they start to bend, because if they get too old they are very tough. We freeze whatever we can't eat and have them several more times during the year.

So, from a gift of one head of garlic and one simple organic pest control scheme, we now get enough heads of garlic to last for the year, several meals of garlic scapes, and aphid-free vegetables. How's that for a success story?

Replace your fallen trees

Montgomery has lost a lot of trees in the last couple of months, between the snow, wind, and rain (see first photo). Please don't be discouraged about planting replacement trees. If you choose the right tree for the place, or the right place for the tree, you have a much better chance of avoiding the kind of damage we are still cleaning up. I hope you will decide to replace any trees you lost, because Montgomery needs trees, and so does the earth.

The most important point I want you to know is this: don't plant a Bradford pear tree! This Frankentree is an environmental disaster. The Bradford pear tree is an example of a Callery pear tree, a type of pear tree that was hybridized to produce pea-sized fruit, so it could be used as a street tree. It has white flowers in spring (see second photo) and beautiful red fall color that recommend it to many people. Unfortunately, it has a weak branching structure, resulting in many fallen limbs (see third photo). Moreover, at the time of year when the fruits ripen, the birds are foraging for native berries, which are fatty, waxy berries, so they can store up energy to migrate, and the birds don't know that the Callery pear's berries don't have the nutrients they need. In fact, they barely have enough calories to repay the birds for the energy they expend in foraging. However, the birds eat the berries and spread the seeds in their droppings, and Callery pear trees are springing up in fields, hedgerows, and forests everywhere. Native butterflies' larva cannot eat the leaves of Callery pear trees, but they outgrow and displace native plants that do provide food for native birds and butterflies. Montgomery Township has banned the planting of these trees and other invasive exotic species on our Open Space and as part of any application for development, and the Shade Tree Committee holds volunteer events to remove them from our Arboretum.

If you are considering planting a Bradford pear tree, please don't. If you have one that has been damaged, why not cut your losses and replace it with a native tree? Callery pear trees don't live long, they are easily damaged in storms, and they are bad for the environment. If you want a flowering tree, you could plant a beautiful ornamental native tree, or if you like the look of a fruit tree, why not plant a flowering crabapple tree? These are not native trees, but the entomologist Douglas Tallamy (see my post titled "Why Native Plants?" from March 28) states that crabapple trees are the only non-native tree that native insects can use just as well as native trees. They have beautiful spring flowers (see fourth photo) and they are drought-resistant and very tough. Do check for a disease-resistant variety; Donald Wyman is a reliable favorite with white blossoms (see fifth Photo). In a future post I will recommend native ornamental trees.

Most people have noticed that the majority of the trees damaged by the storm were evergreens, because they presented much more surface area for the wind to work on. Evergreens also suffer disproportionately from heavy snow. It would not be a bad idea to plant evergreen trees farther away from your house and garage to prevent damage during winter storms. White pine trees all over town lost branches, but an informal windshield survey suggests that Norway and blue spruce trees were the most likely to be uprooted. Apparently they have shorter roots than most other trees. Since they can grow to be very tall, they can do a lot of damage to whatever they fall on. I would recommend that spruce trees, especially, be planted away from your home, or used only for places where evergreen screening is needed. The native Eastern red cedar grows well here in Montgomery in well-drained, sunny spots, with lovely blue berries that birds love to eat (see sixth photo). However, when it grows in shade it gets tall and spindly, which makes it prone to bending over (permanently) or breaking (see seventh photo) when weighted down by snow.

You can prevent some damage to your trees by keeping vines from growing on them, especially English ivy, which is famous for damaging even brick and stone buildings.

Remember to protect any tree that you plant from deer with a fence four or five feet tall. When the tree is little, a flag to alert lawnmowers is a good idea. If the tree is large enough that the deer can't reach its leaves or twigs, don't forget to protect the trunk from scraping by bucks' antlers in the fall, starting September first. Remember to mulch in a doughnut, not a volcano, and no more than 4 inches deep. Mulch should not actually touch the bark of the tree. Also, don't forget to water (equaling 10 gallons for a balled-and-burlapped tree) once a week for the first summer, when there hasn't been a soaking rain.

Soon I'll post some suggestions for native shade trees.