Garlic and Heirloom Tomato Plants.

[The Ranger]

A long time ago, in a land my parents owned, my dad showed me the benefits of planting some plants with others. It's one of the few lessons that I didn't blow off during my rebellious teenage angst. Unfortunately, due to aging and non-use of such a wealth of free knowledge, I no longer remember whether planting garlic with tomatoes is beneficial or disastrous. If I planted some cloves of garlic with my new batch of heirlooms (five beef steak and three Brandywine), will the tomatoes pick up and be dominated by the garlic? Is it even worth planting garlic with the plants to prevent insect predation?

Many thanks.

The Ranger

[Marcella Peek]

According to this chart on companion planting, you should be ok with the garlic near the tomatoes.

[Gary Woods]

Be aware that garlic is a poor competitor, so you will get undersized bulbs if it's shaded/crowded by the tomatoes. Unhappy garlic tends to be smaller but stronger, so it's not _all_ bad!

Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

[Steve Calvin]

My garlic is by tomatoes all the time. The garlic comes to term in June/July so it's not an issue for me. My tomatoes are on the eastern side of the garden and the garlic is on the west (I have a small "strip" garden) and they both get enough sun to do well.

[John Savage]

You might be interested in something I wrote on this very topic to another newsgroup only yesterday; here it is:

On a radio gardening program, an old gardener rang in with this tip for combatting fruit fly in tomatoes. He hammers in a sturdy stake and plants two tomato seedlings alongside it at Winter's end. At the same time, he has some garlic growing nearby. By the time the tomatoes are fruiting the garlic is ready so he pulls it up and hangs it on the stake. I think he said 4 corms per stake. He reckons that with the garlic there he has no trouble with fruit fly in his tomatoes. Might be worth a try.

I didn't include r.g.e in the groups originally because I don't know whether the US or UK have the fruit fly menace. These are like small mosquitoes that lay their eggs in the fruit and these hatch to become grubs that destroy the fruit from the inside.

[Thomas]

Well, I'm in Texas, and that means planting garlic the first week of October so it will be growing underground during the winter and shoot up stalks in the spring. Planting garlic in the spring doesn't give the whole bulb time to develop. Where I live the last average frost is about March 21st, so that means that the tomatoes won't go in the ground until April, so by then our garlic is about a foot tall. The garlic is well established with little competition from the tomatoes. The garlic will probably help with pest control by virtue of being in close proximity to the tomatoes. The garlic is usually ready to come out by late June to mid July and the tomatoes (if we are lucky) will continue to produce (indeterminate varieties) well into August or even September before we get some sort of fusarium wilt

Thomas

[Endangered Bucket Farmer]

Fruit flies are a very serious threat in the US. Even resulting in government-sponsored spraying over residential areas, from helicopters. I vaguely remember this going on the the Los Angeles area in about 1990.

Also apparently a big problem in Florida, for citrus orchards.