Somehow a flat of various marigolds jumped into my cart today. I seem to recall that they can be useful in keeping pests away from some veggies, but I'm not sure how to look up what goes with what. I once read "Carrots Love Tomatoes", but I don't remember much. Anyone know of any websites that help explain how I might make these marigolds both happy, and useful?
Thanks:)
Companion planting?
Taken from http://www.ghorganics.com/page2.html . . .
MARIGOLDS: (Calendula): Given a lot of credit as a pest deterrent. Keeps soil free of bad nematodes; supposed to discourage many insects. Plant freely throughout the garden. The marigolds you choose must be a scented variety for them to work. One down side is that marigolds do attract spider mites and slugs.
French Marigold (T. patula) has roots that exude a substance which spreads in their immediate vicinity killing nematodes. For nematode control you want to plant dense areas of them. There have been some studies done that proved this nematode killing effect lasted for several years after the plants were These marigolds also help to deter whiteflies when planted around tomatoes and can be used in greenhouses for the same purpose. Whiteflies hate the smell of marigolds. Do not plant French marigolds next to bean plants.
Mexican marigold (T. minuta) is the most powerful of the insect repelling marigolds and may also overwhelm weed roots such as bind weed! It is said to repel the Mexican bean beetle and wild bunnies! Be careful it can have an herbicidal effect on some plants like beans and cabbage.
I am new to this and have no idea if any of this is right... but I found these sources useful when I was trying to find out similar info.
http://www.ghorganics.com/page2.html
http://www.seedsofchange.com/enewsletter/issue_55/companion_planting.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants
Sorry, I duplicated locakelly's source... oh well, must be useful!!
www.ghorganics.com is a great site. Thanks for posting
Maybe the marigolds will draw the slugs away from the veggies? That would be nice. I'd rather have them eaten than my veggies.
Latest observations:
I have a huge Dill plant in my garden that I let go to seed. I will use the dill cuttings around my squash plants as Dill is rumored to deter the squash vine borers. As an added bonus, the Dill is currently full of aphids. They seem drawn to the Dill. Better the Dill than my other veggies. I have found some on the taters and peppers, but a good blast from the hose helped, as do the lady bugs that have taken up residence.
I also see many green lacewings and their eggs on the undersides of leaves. Looks like the good bugs are uniting and will be out in full force very soon. Anything that flowers (annuals, herbs) will help to attract the beneficial insects.
I encourage you to interplant flowers with your veggies. I personally like (besides Marigolds and Calendula) Stock and Candytuft. Cilantro when it flowers draws good bugs by the dozens.
I noticed that there is a Companion Planting forum as well. I wonder what they will say. Maybe you could go there, too...and see if there is more info on the subject, as I am interested as well. thanks for your questions.
Evelyn
I love to interplant flowers and veggies; it looks gorgeous and may even help. I also buy packets of beneficial insect attractant plant seeds; last year the packet included dill, which saved me when I wanted to make pickles and couldn't find dill in the supermarket or at the farm stand.
For squash vine borers, growing garlic and nasturtiums is supposed to help deter those and squash bugs. Radishes, too. What has seemed to work best for me, though is silver mulch. I spread it on the row, tack it down with staples or plastic buttons, and make holes for the seeds. I have had my best crops of zucchini ever since I started using that. I do use the garlic and nasturtiums along with that, though, but when I only used companion plants the results weren't nearly as impressive.
g_g, what is silver mulch?
Evelyn, it's a thin plastic mulch colored silver, and therefore reflective. Supposedly it disorients the bugs and they can't settle on the plants. Does the same thing as aluminum foil, but that never worked well for me.
I got mine from Territorial Seed Company
http://www.territorialseed.com/product/1665/s
I'm going to try it with my eggplant this year, too, although someone also suggested letting the eggplant stay in containers until they get fairly large and therefore resistant to flea beetles before planting them.
I decided after last summer's garden to get serious about companion planting and crop rotation. I did the research last fall. I don't remember all the "Why?s" now, but I have Marigolds scheduled to go into the "Cucumber & Melon" bed, and the "Tomato and herbs" bed. I have a note to till in the ones in the tomato bed - that rotation is followed by the "roots & greens" bed, so that makes sense for nematode control.
Thanks, greenhouse_gal! Now I know what you mean. Have you ever tried the red mulch for tomatoes? Our veggie garden is near the road and I am thinking that having all those different colors of mulch will be the talk of the neighborhood! Still, it is rural here, and I think they think of me as an oddball anyway...now I can confirm it! Of course, DH will have to approve first. I had better find out if these thing work before I go spending any more money.
Evelyn
I'm going to try the foil too. After last year's disaster I'm ready to try anything. I planted zukes six (6) times and got to eat only 2 or 3 times. Same for yellow squash. I've gardened for 30+ years and I've never had them even half as bad.
Let me know how this works for you two! Evelyn, no, I've never tried red mulch for tomatoes. I'm not a real fan of plastic in general, and my tomatoes usually do pretty well all by themselves. But I figured it was worth using plastic if I got to have some zucchini to eat!
Twiggy, foil didn't work for me but the silver plastic mulch did.
Pollen, are you saying to till in the marigolds at the end of the season?
I have read in some places not to till every year, that it destroys the soil structure. with so much info out there, it's kind of hard to know what to believe! I do know that tilling brings up seeds that will then germinate.
It sounds like you're also doing crop rotation. What schedule are you following?
Gwen, I do crop rotation too. I try to follow Eliot Coleman's plan, but very roughly, rotating tomato/eggplant/pepper, squash/melon/cucumber/garlic, beans/peas, cabbage/broccoli/kale, beets/chard, carrots/radishes/onions, through about a four-year cycle. It's a bit tricky because my garden has different zones and the rows in various areas are different lengths, so I need more rows in the area by the arbor for tomatoes than I would closer to the pasture.
I know people who don't rotate, but it seems to work for me.
I don't till. I use mulch to suppress weeds (salt hay's good around here) or else I just hoe the surface. I also try to plant fairly thickly so there's no room for weeds (yeah, right!)
By the way, we're having friends over Wednesday for duck à la Little Chef in the Big Green Egg!
This message was edited Apr 19, 2010 9:47 AM
I know what you mean by the crop rotation getting difficult! When do you put lettuces in? Or are those an early in/early out crop and you don't worry about them so much? Here where it's so cool, I can leave lettuces in quite a while. I like to put them in the area that gets the most shade.
I'll have to compare your rotation with the one I figured out. I'm at work right now so don't have access to it. I didn't follow any one person's, but went all over the net making notes and working it all out.
I do the same as you - mulch and hoe. (I love my hoe!)
Have fun on Wed! We're doing meatloaf over guava wood on Sat for friends. I have two larges now! LOL Do you go to your local eggfest? I made it to Atlanta last October. I won't be able to go this year but I hope to get out there every other year. The PNW fest is 6/5, so I'm busy thinking about what to cook at that.
Lettuces I just squeeze in wherever. I had planted some mâche as a fall crop and it didn't do anything until spring, so I put my Bon Jardin lettuce mix in that short row, behind the mâche, and then behind that I planted some romaine seedlings that a friend gave me. Ideally I should have put those behind a fence in an area that gets more shade. But this spring our big project was a new greenhouse, and the contents of the old one were taking up garden rows that I had planned for my early crops. So I had to do some quick revisions and I'm still not sure what I'm going to plant there now.
I just put in my tomato tripods. It's early for them and too early to plant, but it's nice to have them there and ready!
No, I don't go to any of the eggfests. We're not large-group people and anyway it's too hard to leave the chickens and geese and dog.
It's too early for tomatoes for you???? I felt like I was late not having mine in yet. I try and get them in as close to 4/15 as possible and it's been soooo warm here. My starts are just now big enough, imo, to plant out and I recently hardened them off. But I see you're in the same zone as I am. I would have guessed you were warmer.
Well, I'm in 7a, and we've had nights recently in the mid thirties. Tonight it's supposed to be 36. So everything is still in the greenhouse. I normally don't put tomatoes out until the beginning of May. And even though our zones are similar, our climates may be different. You've got the Japanese Current going for you, don't you? We are on a river and that keeps it cool a little later in the spring, and warm a little later in the fall.
Actually I just transplanted my tomatoes into larger four-packs; right now they're buried up to their first true leaves, but they're starting to take off. I like to have them fairly stocky before I plant them out, to protect them from cutworms and sowbugs. I also use collars.
It's supposed to snow again, tomorrow...this is the latest ever for snow in our NoCA foothill area. I usually wait until May 15th as the weather is always unpredictable, until summer...then it is very predictable...hot, hot, hot! Last year I planted out on June 1st...the latest ever, but not due to weather, that time.
Wow. Where is grizzly flats?
I guess you can make up for lost time with all your heat. We have very little, so the sooner I can get them out, the better (as long as I don't lose them to unwanted cold weather!).
Grizzly Flats is west of Lake Tahoe, southeast of Placerville and east of Sacramento. Some years we can put tomatoes out early as March 15th, but unless I am growing from seed, I don't usually waste store-bought plants, so I wait until May 15th. This year, I grew them from seed, though I had no idea that we would be getting snow in April, as it snowed on March 31st, April 5th, and April 9th! Enough, already!
Evelyn
Oh, that's a terrific area! I'm from the bay area originally and came thru Placerville many many many times on my way to Lake Tahoe over the years. I absolutely love it there. I haven't been to Grizzly Flats that I know of, but that's such a great part of Calif! I guess you're zone 8 because you have all the snow insulation?
Well it could be zone 7 but it usually does not get below 17 degrees, as zone 7 is 10 degrees, right? I suppose I could be on the border....
It just stopped snowing as it has been snowing all morning!
Really pretty! I don't know the limits for zone 7. I know that I often see us as zone 8 but we clearly are not as all zone 8 plants die here! It will usually get down to maybe 8 once during the winter and we definitely can get below 17. Altho not often I don't think. It all just depends and as we all know, mother nature is completely redefining how we look at the weather these days!
Marigolds - This is new to me too, my info is theory not experience. I think Marigolds have to be IN the soil to deter nematodes, so you would have to at least leave the roots in at the end of the season. I think you are supposed to incorporate the tops if possible, but there are good reasons for doing "no till" too. Maybe you could compost them then use them as top dressing or mulch?
That's so tricky, evelyn. We don't have that happening, even out here in the midwest. Fingers crossed that it clears up for you soon!