Companion planting forum anyone?

A subject dear to my heart. I know its an offshoot of Organic gardening but there is such a wealth of info and other peoples experiences to enjoy.
:-)) Rosie

I'm looking to see if there is a place already, for what I call companion planting. I'm looking for ideas of what bulbs or herbaceous plants or perennials, could be planted along side each other. My fall planting is getting out of hand, but i'm not sure what plants could be thrown into a large area together & each still have their time to shine? If it's here somewhere already, please direct me.

Davis I would love to say you're in the right place cos I haven't got a lot of response LOL.But I think you might be better off going to the bulb or perennial section. I'm sure they will help you out. What I'm trying to do is find out peoples experiences with herbs and such to help repel bugs and garden invaders and attract beneficial insects and pollinators into the garden.
Hey, if you ever get a bug problem don't forget me.
:-)) Rosie

I'm interested.

Sounds interesting.

Thanks zhinu and Ursula. I've discovered a few things over the years, perhaps you have too and would like to share? I'm particularly interested in which plants attract pollinators and plants which repel invasive insects - garden nasties in other words. Also what plants work with other plants to provide good soil balance for optimum crops.

I'm interested.

Rosie, the truth is that I want to learn from your and other gardener's experience. So far I have been just a 'balcony gardener' (lots of complaints from the other residents in the building have never discouraged me ;o), but I will soon have a large space for gardening, larger than I ever expected.

Hugs,

Ursula

Wow! What have your neighbours got against your balcony garden Ursula? I'm starting a new garden too. This one will be from scratch after having to revamp my other half's family's garden.
if I don't reply for a while it's because I just moved and am not online at the new place yet.

Rosie :-))

I too am interested in companion planting. Ha ve been gardening my whole long life, and still much to learn. I know the fall asters are very late to bloom but they certainly attract a lot of small butterflies and different bees. I make my own compost and use a lot of it.

DonnaS

I'm interested also. I've had just a little experience with this, but would love to learn more.

I'm interested as well. My plans this year is to have a nice vegetable garden and because I have a small area to work with I want to make sure I get as much out of the space as I can and I think companion gardening is the way to go.

WOW! We are getting quite a little group together. I wonder how many names we would need for Dave's to give us our own channel LOL.

Rosie,

What a good idea! Count me in! I have been reading "Carrots Love Tomatoes" and some books on Biodynamics! Now there's a topic as well. It is very complex, but incorporates companion planting as well as successive crops. I would love to know more but I feel that at my age, I could not follow through with all of the Biodynamic "rituals". Many ideas in there as well as gardening by the moon. I think just companion planting would be enough for me.

Evelyn

Evelyn, welcome aboard. I'm not at all technical so maybe I'll leave biodynamics to the mathematicians of the world LOL. Mind you, companion planting can incorporate just about any aspect of sensitive planting so it's really what people chose to talk about that counts.

Rosie :-))

I would also be interested in this forum. It would be great to hear from others what companion plantings have worked for them. I've had a list garnered from some Internet sites and each year try to follow some of it but am not sure how well they all work except that I don't have major bug problems (only flea beetles challenge me - they do the most damage so am still looking for the right herb to plant with the eggplants that actually deters them!) So count me in!! Jessica

This message was edited Nov 11, 2008 1:06 AM

Thanks for signing up Jessica. I've heard that peppermint deters flea beetles - not that I have had to use it as I don't have a problem with them in this area. Lots of mints are very good deterrents for things like aphids - I use marigolds too esspecially in the greenhouse.
If we get a good group going perhaps we could swap some of the plant seeds we use to keep the enemy at bay?

Other than planting marigolds around my veggie garden, I've never thought about something like this. The marigolds didn't seem to help but I'm guessing Mother Nature does provide for all her plants. I'm interested in trying to learn. Would love to go organic if I could.

I keep thinking or Roses and Garlic but not sure if I read this somewhere or if someone told me about it. Has anyone heard about that combination.

I'd love to participate. However, I'm more in the learning stage than sharing what works stage as I'm a relatively new gardener. I've always planted based on how it looks to my eye not how it works as an ecosystem. I"m a plant mover by nature so I'd love to learn to use beneficials to keep my garden beds more pest free. If I could do that without chemicals or with limited intervention and enhance the soil, it would be wonderful.

Davis, the Marigolds not working could have been the type. The old style Marigold, I don't know the official name, is the one that works best the hybrid and modern versions I've been told don't work as well.

I am interested, too. I've done a little over the years, trying to match veggies with each other so they grow better or are protected from bugs; borage for everything, no dill near tomatoes, beans and eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, basil, and oregano are supposed to be happy together; I used these suggestions, but really couldn't tell you if it helped as I don't have more than one or two years of experience at any one site.

I've observed here how well grapes and blackberries grow together.

I have daylilies with tomatoes too. They seem to like it.

Mints are probably a good deterent, but they have to be contained or you could have trouble, depending on location. Here it is more or less invasive. Lemon balm...

More than anything, I would like to learn from others. I wonder if vegetable gardening folks would have an interest if they knew it was under discussion?

We are all of us learning Ladybuggfan so please join us.
zhinu you are right, it's the old fashioned marigolds - either the large African type or the small French ones that repel greenfly. The new hybrids tend to have the smelly chemical repellents bred out of them. I've seen marigolds used in tomato houses to repel greenfly when grown commercially with great success. You just got to remember to use one marigold plant between each tomato plant or pepper or whatever else you grow.
4paws for someone who doesn't know a lot you know a lot that I don't LOL. I've never tried using flowering plants as companion plants to other flowering plants and didn't know about grapes and blackberries.
Although it's true that most mints are invasive, a lot of the smaller ones are not too bad. I use pennyroyal quite a lot and though it can be very fast growing it is easily kept in bounds because it's so small. An excellent ground cover plant with a very pretty blue flower. I'm sounding like an advertisment campaign now LOL.

Roseimp, I've noticed that pennyroyal doesn't seem to get carried away, but I have all my intentional mints in pots, some are big ones sunk in the ground with a lip to hold them back. In fact, it's the only mint I've managed to neglect and maybe kill in a small pot. What zone are you in? Climates vary, and here pretty much everything grows prolifically! I've got 3 acres with a variety of landscape plants and others that have just gone wild...crocosmia, Red Hot Poker, vincas, ivy, ajuga; folks who planted them left them years and years ago with no one to keep them in bounds. The uninhabited, never lived on lands next to me have them, too.... The blackberries that cover our valley are not native, neither are the plums that are everywhere, each fruit different from the other, some tasty, some bear food.

What I know is all from somewhere else; my first, now in tatters, gardening book was about square foot gardening and it had a lot about companions. Not everyone agrees or suggests the same things, I noticed when searching the web last spring. Since I don't have repeated years to compare, I don't know if they helped each other or not.

I'm a dirt-partier more than a real gardener, so flowers and veggies get mixed sometimes. I like it that way. I can graze my way around...lol...and always have something lovely to look at. Plus, I think vegetables are pretty, too.

Not sure if the blackberries and grapes are real, but all summer I picked blackberries and when it was time for grapes (concords, also growing wild up through trees and such), I found I had to hack through lots of berries to get the low growing grapes. I was actually tunnelling to get to them! lol Berries are thick here.

Oh, nasturiums and tomatoes (and about anything, I think). Love nasturiums, but haven't had any grow for me in the way the seem to for someone else.

(sorry, I'm not a succinct poster.)

I would love a thread devoted strictly to companion planting. Just my 2 cents here.

Is it your feeling that this would be all plants/trees/shrubs or is this directed more toward veggie gardening or both. I'd love to see photos of plant selections too. Of course I don't yet have much to offer in that regard as we've changed zones when we moved recently and I'm setting new garden areas and learning all over again.

I would like it to be all inclusive. Of course it would be easier if there were separate threads for veggies, flowers etc.

I would also be very interested the more I learn the better.

Tami :)

I think a companion planting forum should cover everything from vegetables to shrubs to trees. The forum could also cover plants that attract beneficial insects or repel pests.

I agree.

I'm very interested in companion planting, but I'm wondering if a separate forum for it is better than starting discussion threads on the topic in existing forums...

Companion planting for the vegetable garden --> veggie forum
Companion planting for roses --> rose forum
Companion planting to repel pests --> pests/diseases forum
Companion planting for trees & shrubs --> tree & shrub forum
etc.

Sometimes when a topic spans a variety of existing forums, a new forum is the best way to gather the information together and spark further discussion. Sometimes, it might be better to simply discuss the different subtopics individually. Would gathering threads on companion planting into one place provide synergy, or would it pull valuable discussion threads from the relevant forums? I'm not sure... I can make either argument at the moment and convince myself either way!

Either way, I'm a big fan of the concept and would love to see more threads on companion planting, whether they are posted in existing forums or in a new Companion Planting Forum. :-)

Some links with which to populate the first "sticky post" (if the companion planting forum does get started):

Companion plants
http://www.dgsgardening.btinternet.co.uk/companion.htm
http://www.ghorganics.com/page2.html
http://www.gardensimply.com/comherbchart.shtml
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/complant.html
http://www.gardentoad.com/companionplants1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/1530/

Attracting beneficial insects
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/1037/
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/628/
http://www.hgtv.com/gl-diseases-pests-insects/beneficial-bugs/index.html
http://www.hgtv.com/gl-diseases-pests-insects/the-lowdown-on-garden-friendly-bugs/index.html

Thanks! That's a lot of searching -- and a valuable resource right there! I'm going to bookmark your post! :-)

Y'welcome!

Hmm. Didn't know you could bookmark an individual post. Very handy! Thanks Puddlepirate for all that information! Definitely worth bookmarking!
Jessica

I know this is off-topic, but...

To bookmark an individual post, first click on the "post #1234567" to the left of the post (under the poster's name, etc., and time stamp). This opens the post in a window all by itself, and you can bookmark it.

If you go to the individual post, you'll see that you can click at the top of the window to get to the thread it came from.

Thanks critter that is a handy piece of information

I'm happy to be of use, folks.

Sorry to keep missing out on everything but I'm between internet connections at the moment and have to play catch up at my SILs. You can tell I'm in the sticks as the phone company can't connect me till they lay a new cable - seems the existing one is FULL!
4paws I think I'm in zone 9 or thereabouts but I'm not too sure. I'm in the middle of the northern part of Southern Ireland if that makes sense LOL (Irish or what?) and on the map it showed that I was between 8 and 9 with a possibility of a bit of a 10. See I told you I'm not technical LOL. You are a real potager then 4paws. I love the idea of having a potager garden with veggies and flowers all mixed up together and I'm sure it would repel a lot of bugs too. I'm just starting my first lasagna bed ever as my knees are playing up (so no digging) and I want to get this new garden in shape for spring. I'm determined not to miss out on my fresh veggies.
Critterologist I like your style - lets face it, it's a list that can be added to later on if folk feel they have been left out of the loop.
By the looks of things we definatly MUST have our own forum. There's just so much interest. Does anyone know how we go about it?
Thanks puddlepirate for info - nice to see someone who knows what they are doing LOL.
:-)) Rosie

I'm definitely interested in companion planting. I started this fall when I planted my fall/winter veggie garden.

Part of the problem that I've run into is that a lot of the flowers that are good companions to veggies just don't grow here because of the heat and humidity. It's been a real challenge to figure out what I can plant that will attract beneficials and repel the nasties.

In my veggie garden I currently have cosmos, white geranium, mint, nasturtiums, sage, and pesto basil. I was going to plant marigolds, but was told by a master gardener that they attract a nasty (I can't remember which one.... maybe spider mites?).

I purchased a book called "Great Garden Companions" by Sally Jean Cunningham. It's chock-full of good information - but it's not really for my zone. I'd love to be in contact with others in the Houston area who successfully companion plant!