Companion Gardening Guide
Great link TNN, I think companion planting needs to be discussed more.
Same here. Hoping if there are other links others will post. Was inspired to share when saw a thread asking about veg a okay to plant with veg b.
Perhaps this should be a sticky?
That might be good to have a sticky for companion planting.
We'll just have to do a "bump" on this occassionally. Another site link to another gardening site doesn't fit the bill for a sticky thread. :)
I tried companion planting "Carrots love tomatos " kina thing I really didn't see anything special. I still had the bugs and plants grew the same .
I can see some reasons behind. The one i do like is just using is basil with tomatos ,corn with peas .
Maybe i just did it wrong . But i think i followed the book pretty well.
I learned alot from it
I migt do it again this yr .
Have you tried it Dean or Tir ?
i do like the concept of it .
sue
No, have not tried but need to!
I have tried it in the past. I think it has alot of merit. For example corn won't grow well with tomatoes, etc. I think not only along the lines of pest, but also along the lines of legumes. Beans and peas are nitogen fixining plants that might go well with the corn for example.
I also think of it along the same lines as crop rotation. If you grow the same crops consitently in the same soil you may get diminishing returns on your yield. Or in edition there may be outbreaks of disease or pest.
I know for the small time garderner there might not be too much room to rotate. Though if one replinshes the soil w/ compost and other amendments the likelyhood may diminish.
Great subject and I agree it should be discussed more. I use marigolds and you need one with a strong scent as well as nasturtiums as insect repellers. I use radishes and four o'clocks as trap crops for beetles. Also starting to plant more flowers that feed the beneficials I want to draw in. Tomatoes and corn don't do well together because they are both very heavy feeders and you have issues with the corn shading out the tomatoes once it's grown. It's a fascinating subject, but you are in effect creating a mini-micro environment in your garden.
DH and I have gardening organically for a long time. It takes practice and some hard "thinking" about what you're planting together..you need to educate yourself on what that plant is going to do and how it's going to get from seedling to mature fruit bearer.
I trellis the peas and beans and plant lettuce and spinach at the bottom, the peas and beans are great nitrogen fixers, but their tall forms cool the lettuce and spinach that will bolt in the heat. Same thing with spring broccoli, I can usually fudge it a bit if I plant it next to the pole beans on the north side, so the later afternoon sun isn't so strong. Just keep working at it, taynor. When I plant marigolds, I PLANT marigolds, I'll go thru 3 or 4 full flats in my garden. Multiple planting helps act as a repellant and a mass planting is stunning, especially among all the green. It's quite an eye catcher, same with the nasturtiums and their blooms are edible. Yummy in salad. :)
Anybody use Castor bean as a companion plant in there vegetable garden? Look here... http://www.gardentoad.com/companionplants.html
They recommend it for vegetable gardening. Though i'm concerened about possible toxins, etc.
I have ordered some seeds, Dean. I realize their toxic, but I'm not planning on eating them, they are such beautiful plants I want to try them. I've seen posting in some other forums from those who have grown them and they evidently do repel moles. Not one of my problems, thank God. I do want to try the Borage and several of the other herbs. I'm no expert on those, but want to set up container for an herb garden on or next to my patio. I'm still assessing which one's of these herbs can be thugs!
I was just concerned about my daughter wondering into the veggie garden thinking everything was edible. Unless there was that much of an advantage of planting it in the veggie garden I can plant else where.
Yes, you would want to take precautions with a little one, plant it elsewhere, where it's easily watched. ;)
Down loaded this companion guide earlier when I was considering relocating my potatoes based on Catherine's article. I was a bit surprised that potatoes were not mentioned in this chart. I sort of got blasted when I said I was considering mellons, pumpkins and summer squash in the same general area. Normally I plant potatoes next to corn, but the links I have been reading adivsed against too much horse manure, which is exactly where I planned to go next season. So besides corn, what makes potatoes happy??? My new location is next to last years transplated strawberry patch and onions could be their companion to the north...just can't quite make up my mind here. Any suggestions as to compatables for potatoes besides corn?
morgan
doccat5,
I too plan to plant marigolds among the greenery in the garden this summer. My garden is mostly large containers, but I have some smaller ones I want to sit among the Earthboxes. Any tips on taking the marigolds from seed to container would be much appreciated. Also, which are the "strong" varieties you use for bug control? I have purchased 2 packets of the Dwarf French Tiger Eyes. Something tells me these won't be strong enough! Also, I'm starting them out in the peat pellets in a 72-cell flat. Is this correct procedure? Please reply soon as you can, cause today is seed sowing day!
Well, Tiger Eyes are one of the best to plant also the single flower Incas. Have fun, still a bit to early for me to winter sow,but getting closer all the time. Cell flats will work wonderfully well.
Thanks, Doccat5!
Just what I needed to hear to proceed with the Marigolds! I also want color everywhere in my sea of greenery this summer, and on a tight budget, Marigolds and Zinnias are just the ticket!
I try to do companion planting too. Each of my raised planting beds has a mixture of veggies, herbs, and flowers. If you plant borage once, you'll never have to plant it again. It reseeds itself like crazy. I don't find it to be out of control however. I just pull out the easily recognizable seedlings that I don't want, in the spring. The bees LOVE it. I like to plant a few things to keep them happy. In my tomato beds I grow basil, lots of basil, more than I can possibly ever use. But it smells good. I have nasturtiums here and there. I just love the way they look. So I plant them on the ends of the raised beds and they trail down over the edge. Very pretty. Had some volunteer nasturtiums last spring too. I have various herbs mixed in here and there too. I grew garlic along side my artichokes last year. Once the artichokes got big and took over the bed, the garlic had long been harvested. So that worked out well, although I don't know if there was a benefit to them growing together, they certainly didn't compete. I also have the Sally Cunningham book, Great Garden Companions and refer to it before planting things together. But come to think of it, the only bed that has a single crop in it is my asparagus, oh and my strawberries too. If anyone has a companion for keeping the squirrels out of my strawberries, I'd love to hear it. I cover it with mesh to keep the birds out, but somehow the squirrels are great at getting around, under, through it. For now, letting my kitty loose in the garden does help. Although he takes way more naps than the squirrels do.
I too have that book and use it as a reference regularly. Lots of good information in it. We use to have a fellow who looked like your kitty. He was a total character, he'd lay out on the deck or on steps of the ladder my husband was using for the attic. The hummers would come over just out of range and go up and down, up and down. i do wish we had a video camera. It was too cute, of course Harley was much to dignified to "notice" the hummer, yeah right. :)
Beans definitely don't like to be near garlic and onions here.
I think I'll write an article about this subject for DG. Do you guys have any ideas or suggestions I could incorporate into it?
Good idea for an article--I know some of the aromatic herbs aren't good either.
I'm sorry dmj, the aromatic herbs aren't good for what?
Planting around some veggie's--sorry, did not make myself very clear there! =)
They are darn good to grow and eat!
Debbie
Yeppers, I'm going to most of what I have into container and do some rearranging. I don't like my set up it's hard for me to grab some for cooking. But it's fixable.
I think alot has to do with your soil. I planted tomatoes(2006) where I previously had a duck/chicken yard then last year I planted corn in the same area. I had a couple of volunteer tomatoes sprout which I didn't pay much attention to until one day I noticed some nice red tomatoes! I'm very surprised with the limited sunlight how well they did.
here is another one that sprawled between the rows:
and one more that did manage to climb to sunlight!
Good idea for an article.
Thank ya, son.....:) I am a writing fool lately. I'm currently doing one on espaliering fruit trees and finding pictures and getting permission to use them has been er...interesting. Some of the best ones are on French blogs and my high school French is lacking shall we say. But I dug around found a French/English dictionary online and sent her an e-mail. This should be interesting to see what happens. LOL My French teacher would be proud of me, I actually remembered the sentence structure I do believe.
What a great opportunity this has turned out to be, not only am I learning tremendous amounts of new information, I'm meeting all sorts of nice people and getting paid a bit into the bargain. Works for me........LOL
Don't take too much time away from your own garden. LOL
To early yet for most things. I have some more sugar snap peas on the way in. DH has promised of finish me pvc pea trellis for me this weekend. He can put it together in the house if the weather is nasty. I normally plant my sugar snaps the middle to end of Feb here. I use innoculant and warm the soil with black plastic to cheat. Just cover the seedlings with row cover till they get some size and away they goooooooooo!
I figured you would still have hold outs from your fall garden. Unless you've already harvested them all.
Sugar snaps don't do as well here in the fall for some reason. I did order a couple of new varieties to try and see if that's the problem. Pretty lousy production, however, just harvest 2 more full heads of broccoli and a bunch of side shoots yesterday. I had enough of those to fill a gallon size ziploc bag. I just blanched the heads, broke em down and froze them also. I have 6 broccoli plants and they are doing very well. I'll have enough put by to pass some on to my kids and have already give fresh to my neighbors. LOL
They don't do well in the fall here either--I always thought it was because of daylength.
TNN great link on companion planting. I am using it as some basis on my seed order. I am glad that I have not sent the order in, yet.
Just a note. On one of these CP guides somewhere it explained why my potatoes and green beans failed so miserably last year!! Do not plant them with or after one another and DON'T put 'em in after the onions!! Wish I had seen that before losing two planting seasons...
anyone ever try planting watermellons with purple hull peas?
I did plant, IAW "carrots love tomatoes," tomatoes, mondarda, and basil together. I got TONS of tomatoes, very little pest damage. I wish I'd kept a record of the weights, but the worst day's harvest was 7, the best 23. This from a 2x6 raised bed.
Wish I knew. My beans did horribly last year and the purples were next to melons....but I've no idea whether that means anything...have you checked the various charts? I've never personally done any of this CP, but it would explain a couple of singular failures...ah well...maybe someone will come along...