I ate a ton of garlic but the ticks didn't seem to mind at all.

Old timers here say that a freezing cold winter slows them down, but if there's snow or ice on the ground they'll live through that because it insulates them from the colder air temps. We only had a few cold days this past winter but we didn't have any snow or ice, and this year ticks have not been too bad. I'm not sure that means much though.

I know the non-deet "Off" with Picaridin works great. It seems to last as long as Deet. I was Florida in early Spring canoeing on a spring fed river and in several places where we stopped a cloud of mosquitoes appeared almost instantly. I got a spray bottle of that out and pumped a few shots into the swarm and they vanished and didn't come back while we were there. We all put some on too, so I'm sure that helped, but we weren't bothered.

Like Deet, it works great for keeping ticks from biting you, but no so well at keeping them off of you and you can still drag them in the house on your clothing where they'll chase you down and bite you still.