Design Your Garden Online! eBook Questions & Answers Free & Fun Stuff Gift Shop Planning a Garden Planting a Garden By Vegetable... By Fruit Canning Foods Freezing Foods Recipes All About Tomatoes Container Gardening New Pages Contact, Privacy, Sitemap
Subscribe To This Site
Companion Planting of Vegetables; Vegetable Garden Companion Planting for Success
Use our free guide for companion planting of vegetables when vegetable gardening at home. Helpful tips for planning a healthy and productive vegetable garden by companion planting vegetables, flowers, and herbs.
Before anyone heard of proven mutually beneficial relationships between plants, gardeners knew certain plants helped their neighboring plants, and others seemed to have an opposite effect. You can use this gathered knowledge for companion planting of vegetables in growing a healthy vegetable garden.
Why Companion Planting of Vegetables Works
Vegetable plants can be great companions and form plant partnerships for many reasons. Plants may support or shelter one another, provide extra nutrients to benefit a garden bed neighbor, repel pests, and keep diseases away. The partnership can be due to the plant's size, habit, scent, oils, hormones, and enzymes give off through leaves and roots.
One of the best-known good neighbor plants is the African marigold. Onward from the 16th century, gardeners have welcomed marigolds into their vegetable gardens for its color, foliage, and the discovery that other plants seemed to flourish, and insects were repelled, when marigolds were planted nearby.
Botanists discovered that with the marigold's companion planting of vegetables. its strongly scented flowers and foliage repel flying pests. By secretions from marigold roots, it prevent weeds and kills parasitic worms called nematodes, which destroy vegetable crops.
Companion Planting Using Peas and Beans for Nitrogen
Peas and beans make excellent companion plantings of vegetables because their roots fix nitrogen in the soil for others plants to enjoy. Before the threshing machine was invented, farmers often grew cereals mixed with peas and beans to provide nutrition for their crops.
Foxglove as a Companion Plant
Another old favorite companion planting of vegetables is foxglove. These are grown not only for their beauty, but because they stimulate growth of other plants and help resist disease. If you grow foxglove in the vegetable garden, it improves the storage qualities of the produce. This is thought largely due to beneficial gaseous secretions as well as minute amounts of hormones given of by foxgloves. Root vegetables store better if grown near these companion plants.
Vegetable Gardening Tip
Plant marigolds right on the edge of a herb garden border because the plant's root secretions can inhibit the growth of some herbs. Don't mix the marigolds in the beds with the herb plants.
Vegetable Garden Companion Planting with Flowers and Herbs
Flowers are helpful companion planting of vegetables to attract insects that ensures pollination. Nasturtiums, a member of the cabbage family, deter blackfly away from vegetables. Members of the Allium family such as onions and garlic, make powerful alliances in the vegetable garden. Their success as fungicides and insecticides possibly stems from the accumulation of sulfur, a strong odor which deters many pests.
Among the many herbs that mutually benefit vegetables with their overpowering scent is Chamomile. This herb has long been valued in the vegetable plot. Besides its sweet fragrance, it brings potassium, sulfur, and calcium to the surface of the soil. This action provides the soil's nutrients to the roots of the companion plants. Chamomile also hosts helpful wasps and hover-flies.
Companion Planting of Vegetables
The following are a sampling of plants that make good neighbors:
• Asparagus planted with tomatoes.
• Beans, marigolds, squash, and corn.
• Carrots, beans, onions, garlic, chives, and tomatoes.
• Beets, lettuce, cabbage, and onions.
• Potatoes, beans, peas, corn, and broccoli.
• Sunflowers, squash, corn, and cucumbers.
• Tomatoes, parsley, basil, carrots, onions, and asparagus.
• Lettuce, radishes, carrots, and squash.
• Garlic, turnips, and peas.
• Artichoke and parsley.
• Cauliflower, beans, thyme, sage, mint, rosemary, dill, and potatoes.
• Green beans, potatoes, corn, celery, and cucumber.
Plant Combinations to Avoid
Plants that do not make good companion planting of vegetables include: