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A>>C8=6 0A>D=3 Planted alongside garlic, carrots can grow to be sweeter than ever.
D]STaVa^d]S BRT]T Carrots and garlic perfect for planting, making mayo together By Ari LeVaux
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ust when you thought you could finally escape the garden, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s already time to plant garlic. This rite of autumn has been an important event in my gardening season for years, but this past summer the garlic patch became more crucial than ever. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s because I devised a method to make the garlic patch grow a bunch of other crops, too, without any loss of garlic production. I call my method â&#x20AC;&#x153;hurling random seeds at garlic patch.â&#x20AC;? This is more than just a horticultural parlor trick. When you grow as much garlic as I do, that patch takes a lot of garden space, leaving precious little ground for all the other goodies one might wish to grow. Intercropping other crops with garlic substantially increases the yield from however much ground youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got to work with. Last April, I gathered the seeds from countless half-empty seed packets and plastic bags, and combined these seeds in a bowl. I tossed handfuls
of this mix into the young garlic patch, hoping some of the plants would take hold. Throughout the summer I repeated this procedure with newly acquired seedsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;mostly carrots, because I had a feeling theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d work well. The little plants took hold wherever conditions were favorable, and grew in the shade of garlic plants and each other. The seedlings had plenty of water since I irrigate my garlic like a maniac. By harvest time, my garlic crop was as big and healthy as usual, but in between those plants, the ground was carpeted with edible quantities of lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, escarole, radicchio, beets, squash, broccoli and amaranth. After I harvested the garlic in July, the spawn of those hurled seeds switched into high gear, their status on the ecological ladder having switched from shaded understory to full-sun canopy. The post-garlic garden became a dense and diverse ecosystem, easy on the eyes as well as the belly. Harvesting from this garden was an act of gathering as much as gardening, and
gave an element of surprise to every harvesting adventure. Over the course of the summer, many plants, like spinach, escarole, lettuce and amaranth, went to seed, ensuring new generations will be ready to come up next year if I let them. Of all my post-garlic plants, it was the carrots that stole the show. They grew to be monstersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; as sweet as candy, heavy enough to require excess baggage charges and big enough to make a porn star blush. Clearly, the carrots didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to mind the garlic. And based on my garlic crop, the feeling appears to be mutual. The lush carrot foliage shaded the ground between the garlic plants, acting as a living mulch to prevent evaporation from the soil, while underground, the carrot roots and garlic bulbs seemed to leave each other alone. Above ground, garlic and carrots complement each other nicely in the kitchen as well, demonstrated with savory elegance by carrot mayonnaise. Although itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a true mayonnaise, carrot mayo fulfills the basic &+ THE BOHEMIAN
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