question: organic broccoli & garlic
Stephen Hemminger
the safe organic pesticide B.T. (tradename Dipel) either as a powder or
as spray. It is a bacteria which rots out the guts of the caterpillars.
Hand control by picking is possible, but diffcult to keep up with the pests.
If you look hard you might even find the eggs. Also scratch back some soil
around the base of the plants and look for little white worms; cabbage root
fly maggots.
--
Stephen Hemminger {ihnp4,decvax,ucbvax}!tektronix!hammer!steveh
Tektronix GWD Networking ste...@hammer.gwd.tek.csnet
l pfau
> plants are just eaten to death. I'd rather not use any
> dangerous organic pesticides. I've seen little
> off-white bugs and worms on the bottoms of leaves and have
> killed them.
Heather:
Broccoli is notorious for getting little worns, especially
as the seasons progresses. We get them among the florets.
I soak the brocolli for 1/2 hour in cold salt water, which
usually gets them out. Cooking the brocolli will also get them
out, of course. If they get too bad, I quit eating the
brocolli - its too gross.
I would also be interested in a safe way to get rid of
them and I recall seeing Bob Thompson on the Victory
Garden using some kind of organic spray, but I can't
remember the name.
Lynn Pfau
AT&T Bell LABS
Naperville, Ill
Frank Cooley
> I'm trying to raise broccoli without pesticides and the
> plants are just eaten to death. I'd rather not use any
> dangerous organic pesticides. I've seen little
> off-white bugs and worms on the bottoms of leaves and have
> killed them.
>
> has two thin wilted green fronds. Is that how it's supposed
> to look? How long would it take to get garlic? How is it
> that the plant grows out of the clove but in the process creates
> a whole head?
>
> Thanks,
> Heather Booth
It takes the whole summer to grow a good garlic.
The answer to your second question is, its magic.
Frank Cooley
Andrea K. Frankel
frequent washdowns using Safer Agrochem's Insecticidal Soap, and
hitting them with a hose spray whenever I thought about it.
I've grown regular and elephant garlic, and found that the plants
vary widely in their robustness, somewhat related to the size of
the clove. Think of a normal head of garlic - some large, mostly
normal, and a few teensy cloves. Your wimpy plant may have been
from a wimpy clove, OR you may have had something sprayed to prevent
sprouting (most storebought garlic is treated, unless is says
otherwise). Re creating a whole head from a clove - garlic is
biennial, the first year it creates the head full of cloves and
the second year (if you allow it to stay in the ground) it exhausts
the energy stored in the head of cloves to grow more and flower.
The ones that I didn't manage to dig out of the ground provided
a very nice little bed of flowers the next year!
Andrea Frankel, Hewlett-Packard (San Diego Division) (619) 592-4664
"every time that wheel goes round, bound to cover just a little more ground"
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Gary Swift
In article <11...@princeton.UUCP> bo...@princeton.UUCP (Heather Booth) writes:
>I'm trying to raise broccoli without pesticides and the
Try planting some marigolds near them, which are good for repelling
all sorts of pests. Nasturtiums will theoretically attract pests
away from the rest of the plants in your garden. Also plant
your garlic, onion or chives near the broccoli -- some bugs
are repelled by the odor.
>I planted a clove of garlic just for fun. The plant only
>has two thin wilted green fronds. Is that how it's supposed
>to look? How long would it take to get garlic?
The leaves should be healthy and green for a while. When they
die back, dig up the clove and make yourself some scampi.
Mine take 2 to 3 months (in southern Calif.). Rather than
buying sets at a nursery, I just planted some store bought
cloves that got old and began to sprout new green shoots.
> How is it
>that the plant grows out of the clove but in the process creates
>a whole head?
Cell division? :-) Garlic is just like any other perennial
that stores its food in a bulb or rhizome. It's a member of
the lily family - which all have bulbs.
--
Gary Swift, INTERACTIVE Systems Corp., Santa Monica, Ca., (213) 453 8649
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