Matt Bris

Hi Nick I have been building my garlic stock over the last 4 years, I hope to plant around 600 decent size cloves this year.  I live in subtropical Australia, I get no frost and rainfall of about 1400mm per year. This isn't really garlic country, however there are 2 varieties that have been developed to work around here.  We plant late March (Autumn) and harvest at the start of spring (September) here, so it only takes about 5 to 5.5 months to grow here.  I suspect this is a lot different to what is done in more common, colder garlic growing areas (I think I read somewhere it takes about 9 months to grow generally).  Unfortunately weeds also grow fast here.

This is my first year experimenting with living mulch around the garlic, Im hoping it will be successful because it takes me a lot of time to mulch the garden beds by hand.  I am going to try cowpeas and nasturtiums.  Both will thrive and be quite dense

yes thanks for the replies.

Garlic is not due for planting till late march but I was planning on planting the cowpea shortly (in the next month) as the beds are ready and will start filling up with weeds shortly.  As you said, I can trim back the cowpea when I plant the garlic as required.  I have grown cowpea before and it is a very good weed suppressor.

Here is the link to the info about Alliums affecting legumes - https://luv2garden.com/leeks_companions.html
but it appears they are not considered good companions due to the affects of the Alliums (garlic) on the legume and not the other way around.

Hello,
I am getting ready to plant garlic here in Brisbane Australia and I am thinking about using cowpea to suppress the weeds around my garlic crop.  I understand that legumes are not a good companion for garlic because garlic gives off a compound called "ajoene" which can inhibit legume growth.  I was wondering if the planting of legumes will do anything to affect the garlic or is it just that the garlic can affect the legume?  The legume (cowpea) is simply there to suppress weeds and if it is not growing to its maximum potential then I am not too concerned, it will just be dug into the soil.  If the growth of the garlic is affected by legume then that would be a problem.

Has anybody used legumes to suppress weeds around garlic?

Many thanks
Matt