Companion Planting and Other Things about Plants that may Help you in the Garden

One of the most discussed techniques of an organic garden is companion planting. Companion planting is a very useful technique in the organic garden and can help maintain health in plants and a happy balance in the garden, even if it just an aesthetic one, such as putting pretty prostrate herbs like lawn chamomile and thyme and low growing flowers like petunias, alyssum and dwarf marigolds around the border of a vegetable patch. Ideally however things should have a duel purpose, as espoused in the idea of Permaculture. For instance these aesthetic attributes can also have a practical influence, such as the marigold's ability to deter nematodes in the soil and the chamomile's ability to attract bees, which help pollinate your zucchinis, tomatoes and watermelons, and other useful insects like predatory wasps which can keep down populations of other bugs. Plants like parsley, coriander and mitsuba (a Japanese herb) can also attract other beneficial insects to the garden and should be grown around the garden.

Certain plants can also be extremely useful for soil improvement, with many plants adding nutrients, or making nutrients and important trace elements available to other plants merely by their presence, or the addition of their leaves or flowers to the soil as teas or mulches. For example, it has been found that chamomile, buckwheat and daisies accumulate calcium even when grown in calcium-poor soils (Culture and Horticulture, Wolf D.Storl, 1979) and that valerian promotes phosphorous activity. It is also a well established practice by even conventional farmers to rotate heavy feeding crops, like sugar cane or corn, with legumous plants like peanuts, green beans, soya beans, or lentils and peas (according to the suitability of the climate). These legumous plants draw nitrogen from the air into the soil in such abundance that it is often available for the next crop's use. Potato farmers also have to rotate crops to avoid devastating diseases such as blight. Since we have such heavy reliance on chemical fertilisers and pesticides however, further experiments in companion planting seem to be neglected. And with the advent of genetically modified foods which try to create plants impervious to pest, diseases and pesticides such as roundup we are moving towards potentially unstable and plain stupid farming practices where plants are not bred to survive naturally, but to be propped up by a cocktail of chemicals. And worse still we are creating plants which may themselves become harmful weeds. Especially for the home gardener, old-fashioned varieties of plants are the best.

Companion planting won't totally stop pests attacking a plant but there are some traditional companions that do seem to work okay. For instance: basil, marigolds and tomatoes; and borage, pyrethrum and strawberries, as well as the practice of planting fragrant herbs as borders to confuse pests, though pests are called pests for a reason, as they don't always fall for this trick. It is also important to have some perennial plants in the garden to provide accomodation for things like praying mantis and ladybeetles. Otherwise the poor things will be homeless and may wander the streets and get run over by cars and things. Better to provide them with long term accommodation and not to leave the garden bed totally bare at any stage. Even if it is just a corner of the garden, or what one could describe as a hippy habitat. Let's face it, we are not gods and we don't always necessarily know how things are working in our little ecosystem, so at least part of the garden should be left to grow with some little indigenous plants or pretty things that don't seem to have any use at all - part from being pretty.

• Lawn chamomile grown under small Scotch pine (my invention).Cabbage planted with a border of dill and chamomile.Members of the umbellifer family such as parsley, celery, parsnips, mitsuba and carrot grown with the onion tribe - but also just generally beneficial, especially if you let the umbellifers flower (just leave them in the ground they'll eventually flower though sometimes not till the second year, as they are bi-annuals, as many of this family are). Since things like parsley also have deep roots, they are good for holding the soil in and for using nutrients not accessible to many other plants - borage is also good for this and in attracting bees.
• Bush beans, tomatoes and sunflowers are a nice combination. The beans will be finished by the time the others really start to grow, and again, the sunflowers attract bees and predatory wasps who need nectar as well as bug blood.



• Corn, beans, squash and cucumbers grow well together in America, and perhaps elswhere. I haven't found it that successful, and I was reading in The Permaculture Backyard, that others have found the same. I'd be inclined to grow lots of Greek oregano with cucumbers as it is meant to deter cucumber flies and I'd throw in a few more umbellifer. Umbellifers here there and everywhere should be your motto.
• Leeks with celeriac or celery, are cool, as both like potash fertiliser.
• Lentils, thickly planted, provide a good green manure around potatoes, pumpkin or tomatoes, just dig them in before they flower.
• Lettuce and dill do well together.
• Olive trees planted in fields of red clover look spectacular and the clover provides nitrogen and attracts bumble bees.
• Radish like nasturtium, chervil and peas.
• Actually heaps of things like nasturtiums so grow them as a border, especially on neighbour's fencelines and behind sheds and stuff.
• Tomatoes like parsley and New Zealand Spinach.
• Watermelons in the subtropics, can be planted very successfully with cow peas, which provide both a bit of shade and nitrogen.