Somewhere in England there is an attractive woman called Claire who has an allotment and an insatiable desire to tell us what she grows there and how she goes about it. In this — Part 9 in the Claire’s Allotment series — Claire takes 5 minutes to show us how to avoid carrot fly in carrots and onion fly in onions. You simply plant onions and carrots together in one bed. This is because onion flies hate the smell of carrots and carrot flies hate the smell of onions. Therefore the flies stay away in droves.
You plant the little onion bulbs (you buy them ready to plant) and the carrot seeds in rows (“drills” they call rows in England) about 3″ to 4″ apart, with the rows themselves a little further apart — about 8″ to 12″. Remember to turn the soil over really well, breaking up the clods and removing the stones, as carrots need soft soil to grow. If they hit a rock or a hard place they tend to produce “prongs” and then you get carrots that look like alien vegetable matter. For the record, Claire quite likes these extraordinarily shaped carrots…
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