Carob
Ceratonia siliqua
Built for hot, dry ground — one deep soak a month in summer and nothing at all in winter suits it.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Purple and violet
- Sunlight
- Full sun, and it takes reflected heat off a wall without complaint.
- Watering
- A single deep soak each month in summer; none through winter.
- Feeding
- A light feed in spring, and none at all once the tree is settled.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- September
- Pruning
- Barely any pruning — shape it early, then leave it alone.
- Mar–Jun Bud Break
- Jun–Sep Fruiting
- Sep–Sep Harvest
- Sep–Dec Flowering
- Dec–Dec Dormancy
- Jan–Mar Dormancy
- Plant spacing
- 26 ft 3 in
- In-row spacing
- 26 ft 3 in
- Between rows
- 32 ft 10 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, with a taproot it keeps
- Working depth
- 24 in–5 ft
- Can reach
- 10 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 39–66 ft across, about 1.5–2.5× the width of the plant
It anchors downwards as well as sideways, which is what lets it stand in a gale and what makes it hate being moved. Plant it small: past a few years in the ground a taprooted tree transplants badly, and often not at all.
The habit is Carob’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Confirmed safe
We say a plant is safe only where a named poison-control reference names that exact species and records it as non-toxic to both cats and dogs. Most plants are on nobody’s list, and their absence here is not a judgement about them. This is a record of what those references say, not veterinary advice, and it cannot account for your own animal, the quantity eaten, or a plant treated with anything.
- Scale insects Scale insects along the branches
- Powdery mildew Powdery mildew when the air stays humid
- Root & crown rot Root rot in waterlogged ground
- Carob moth (Ectomyelois ceratoniae), whose larvae feed inside the pods
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Scale insects
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Rosemary, Lavender, Thyme, Cistus
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com