People may have been on to something when they hung garlic around their necks to ward off vampires. Turns out the pungently odiferous bulb repels a wide variety of pests. In researching a natural way to keep the sheep from harboring worms in their gut, one answer is to feed them garlic. I now cut up half a bulb and mix it with their oats and molasses each evening. Mmmm. (For the record, they gobble it up as long as it’s in small enough morsels). Looking for a way to keep the bunnies from dining on the vegetables, Amber found a recipe for an all natural spray repellant. You take two tablespoons of crushed red pepper (spicy!) and two or more tablespoons of chopped garlic, pour 32 oz warm water over and let steep overnight. Then spray directly on your vegetables’ leaves. The bunnies don’t like either the smell or the flavor, and will opt for the non-garlicky fare outside the veg field (knock on wood with me on that one – we’re doing preventive work against the bunnies who live in the bramble patch. I wouldn’t put it past them to go UNDER the deer fence to get to our brassicas).
From all the chopping of garlic, my fingertips are seldom free of the odor. Vampires beware.
