My aunt doesn’t usually listen when I talk companion planting, but apparently she was listening when I quoted Lois Riotte‘s iconic companion planting book of the same name: roses love garlic. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise. Flowers are her thing, while veggies are mine.
On my last visit in June, she excited told me of how she’d planted a cloves of garlic from the grocery store with her roses and then proceeded to show me where she put them:
Garlic in the balcony planter
And the hanging basket! Makes a nice accent.
It’s hard to see here but it’s a tiny sliver of green in the center of the photo, coming up from the soil
The garlic doesn’t seem to be keeping the red lily beetles from devouring the lily leaves to the left, but the flowers in general seem to be doing well.
We’re hoping the giant bush in the center is marigold that I planted from seed.
Incidentally, I knew nothing about the red lily beetle until I started writing this post. The beetle is a beautiful, rich red colour. I’d seen it a few times on the leaves and last weekend when I visited I let one walk across my fingers. I didn’t realize how much damage they do. The organic way of dealing with them seems to be to manually remove, squish and drown or use diatomaceous earth. More on organic control:
Fighting lily leaf beetles organically
City of Calgary Pest Management
