What’s in there, you ask? Beats me. Bachelor buttons, fennel, baby corn, red chinese beans, lima beans, salsify, cosmos… and I really can’t remember what else I may have planted in there. Nor can I find anything. But since it all looks lush and green something must be going right. Right?
The fun part of companion planting your garden is that there’s a surprise in every bed! Just today I found a watermelon plant growing happily where I don’t remember planting one. There’s a melon quickly filling in where the garlic was up until a few days ago, and my winter squash are merrily rambling their way up my sweet corn.
Do you use companion planting in your garden? I started it years ago and have been playing around with different ideas about which plants are companions and which are antagonists. Up until this year I knew one companion combination that absolutely rocked: basil and tomatoes. If you surround your maters with enough basil you will not have one single horn worm all season (and you’ll have enough pesto for a small army). This year, I’ve found a new companion combo that seems to work: potatoes and bush beans. All the books that suggest this combination say not to interplant the beans with potatoes, but to surround the potato bed with the beans, or plant the two crops side by side.
Since I knew I’d never get around to hilling my potatoes anyway, I just went ahead and planted the beans between the potato rows. I had never planted potatoes before, but each year I have issues with these little furry yellow caterpillar beasts chowing down on my beans. Not this year! I had very few Colorado Potato beetles on my potatoes and I have yet to see any of those little yellow bean eaters!
I’ve tried planting my corn and beans together, but have just not had much success. The corn seemed stunted and it was a big pain to harvest the beans.
Time to share: which plant combinations do you have experience with and which ones do you love?
2 comments:
Very nice. I tried companion planting last year and this year. I planted marigold with the tomatoes but I will try planting basil with them. I like the potato and bush beans idea. Will give that a try next year.
Thanks!
Hooray for companion planting! Been doing that ever since I started - last year I planted potatoes and bush beans just like you did - and it turned out great!
I have basil and peppers growing among my tomatoes, cosmos and dill with the eggplants and peppers (because it's just plain PRETTY!), zinnias among the cucumbers, marigolds with the potatoes and beans, and sage in my carrots and beets section (to repel flea beetles). I also like to plant a few seeds of borage among anything - they are pretty, edible and attract loads of bees for pollination.
I also have cucumbers growing up my tomato trellises, lol, and the cucumbers are enjoying the shade from the lettuce that has gone to seed.
ps. My pineapple tomatoes are gigantic!
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