Some vegetables, herbs, and flowers can help and feed each other when planted next. Basil and tomatoes work well together in sauces, pizzas, and salads. It’s hard to think of cooking tomatoes without using basil. Did you know that you may increase the number of tomatoes in your garden by planting basil next to them?
Companion planting is a natural way of gardening that focuses on having different plants together. Instead of planting each type of vegetable in separate rows, mix them in the same space. This helps them grow better together. Companion plants can do three things: They can keep harmful insects away, attract helpful bugs, and give nutrition to the plants.
Plants That Repel Pests
Many pests find their next meal by following its smell. The cabbage moth would quickly seek out a place filled only with broccoli and cabbage. If you plant carrots and onions around that area, you can hide the smell of the broccoli and cabbage. This will make it hard for the moths to find their next meal. They might fly off to look for another garden.
“All plants give off strong smells all the time, but some do it more than others,” says Dr. Jack Schultz, an expert in bugs at Penn State University. Plants with strong scents can trick pests. This helps to keep them away from their favorite food, especially the ones that use smells to find dinner. If you plant garlic and marigolds around your garden, they can drive away aphids and beetles. However, this is one-way plants can protect themselves from pests.
Some plants have phytotoxins that can make other pests sick or even kill them. Flies, mosquitoes, spider mites, and Mexican bean beetles can feel ill or die after eating mustard oils found in cabbage and related plants. This is why cabbages are good companion plants for beans.
Sometimes, a plant can keep bugs away by having a barrier between the bug and the plant it likes to eat. If raccoons are trying to get to your corn, you can put a rough barrier of squash vines around it. I’ve also seen a good effect in my garden: Flea beetles enjoy eating cabbage and cauliflower. However, they don’t seem to touch the sticky, hairy leaves of tomatoes. When I planted the two vegetables together, they stopped bothering my cabbage and cauliflower too.
Catnip can keep away fleas, Colorado potato beetles, and green peach aphids. You don’t have to plant catnip in your garden to use it. Catnip can spread on its own, but if you grow it outside the garden, you can cut it and use it as mulch. Other plants, like tansy, also help keep pests away. You can make tea with tansy and spray it on plants to stop squash bugs.
For the carrot fly, leeks, onions, and rosemary are plants that can help keep pests away. Parsley and tomatoes can work against the asparagus beetle. Geraniums and petunias help against leafhoppers. Southernwood can protect against cabbage moths and nasturtiums are good for whiteflies. A study from Washington State University showed that sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) helps tomatoes fend off pests.
Plants That Attract Beneficial Insects
Every bad bug has an enemy, which is usually other bugs. You can draw these helpful bugs by putting flowers in your garden. Flowering plants draw in good bugs by providing shelter and food. These hard-working bugs also need a steady supply of pests to eat. “Growing plants that offer food may help good bugs stay longer,” says Mary Louise Flint, a bug expert at California State University in Oakland, California.
So how do you do it? Do you know which plants to grow? The important part is to grow different flowering plants that will bloom all season for helpful bugs to eat. Plant early flowering plants like alyssum, sweet woodruff, crocus, and candytuft. Local grasses make a good home where helpful bugs like ladybugs, assassin bugs, and beetles can stay safe through winter.
Look at your plants. Check carefully to find any pests. Then, grow plants that will attract their natural predators. Flowers from the umbel family are a popular place for parasitic wasps, lacewings, and hoverflies to feed. Parasitic wasps help fight pests like cutworms, corn earworms, and cabbage loopers. You can plant parsley, dill, or coriander with crops like corn, lettuce, or cabbage to help control these pests.
Giant insects that hunt other insects often go to big flowers, like those from the Compositae family. Ground beetles and soldier beetles eat cucumber beetles, caterpillars, grasshopper eggs, and some slugs. You can protect your plants, like squash, cucumbers, and melons, by using companion plants. Some good options are calendula, goldenrod, zinnias, or African daisies.
Flowering plants in the mint family attract helpful insects. This includes the tachinid fly, which is a strong enemy of many pests, like Japanese beetles, Mexican bean beetles, cutworms, and grasshoppers. Spearmint, peppermint, bee balm, and thyme are great at drawing in these insects.
Most flowering plants can offer food for predators and parasites that control insect pests. This includes vegetables too. If your lettuce and broccoli start to flower and you miss the harvest, please leave them. This will help keep helpful insects nearby and support their future growth.
Grow sunflowers or other plants with seeds to bring in birds. This will help you have fewer grubs and flying pests.
Plants That Nourish
Plant allies help keep other plants healthy and improve nearby vegetables’ taste by giving nutrients. Think about those herbs that will enhance a vegetable’s taste in meals and grow those plants together. Basil grows well with tomatoes, dill supports cabbage, and summer savory is good with beans. For vegetables, carrots, green onions, radishes, and lettuce are great neighbours (and work well in salads).
Other plants can help their neighbours stay healthy by protecting them from sickness. Garlic and chives stop black spots on roses and scabs on apples. They also work against rust and mildew. Heat can harm strawberries, spinach, lettuce, and turnips in the summer. Bigger plants like pole beans and tomatoes give shade to these vegetables. This shade keeps moisture and lessens the heat. It helps stop the vegetables from becoming tough or going to seed.
Some plants are grown as cover crops to help get a garden ready. They bring up essential nutrients, like trace minerals, and can even take nitrogen from the air into their roots. When they break down, they return this nutrition to the soil. Tomatoes need a lot of calcium, phosphorus, and trace minerals to taste good. Buckwheat can provide all these nutrients and can be grown as a cover crop the year before you plant tomatoes. Nitrogen-fixing crops, such as fava beans, alfalfa, vetches, and clover, can also be grown. You can combine them into the soil before planting nitrogen-loving plants like squash, corn, celery, greens, and broccoli.
Companion planting is a practice that organic gardeners have used for a long time, but not many scientists have studied it. I have found several good planting combinations by chance, and you can, as well. Variety is very important in any garden. Most experts say that a garden with several kinds of plants is always healthier than a garden with just one type of plant.
