It's almost time to plant the Spring garden (hurray!) so I thought I'd write today about a subject that I have found interesting for years and particularly in the last several years living in rural Kansas. It is a clever method of planning one's vegetable garden known as companion planting. It's the science, if you will, of planting certain plants next to certain others and it's one of the secrets of great vegetable gardening. The reasons are many, including the balancing and sharing by plants of the soil nutrients, the ability of some plants to ward insects off other plants, and I think most interestingly, the change and enhancement of flavors due to placing certain plants next to each other while they are growing. It's also the best organic way that costs nothing extra to get a high yield and deep flavor from your garden. So, here is a short list and description of the best order to plant veggies in for the best results:
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are the main topic of conversation in rural Kansas all summer long because for some odd reason Kansans care deeply about the flavor of their tomatoes. This is only odd because they rarely discuss the flavor of the peppers or the lettuce that they are also growing. One suspects, even, that sometimes fish stories are told in the local cafes about the size of certain gardeners' tomatoes. Never-the-less, there are several plants that are great to plant next to one's tomatoes and this itself can be of great consideration, which companion plant to choose. I give you the best possibilities, those veggies that will complement tomatoes by complementing the soil beneath them together: carrots, broccoli and kale, all of these being in the cabbage family, asparagus, celery and onions. The best herbs to plant next to tomatoes are basil, which increases the flavor of both the basil and the tomatoes, beebalm, borage, which repels the tomato worm, spearmint and pennyroyal mint, which repel aphids and ants and bugs that love cabbage. Marigolds are great planted by tomatoes because they also repel insects. A lot of kitchen gardens around here have marigolds inbetween each tomato plant for this reason. Parsley also keeps insects off tomatoes because insects adore parsley so it's best to plant parsley in a pot or a spot a ways away from the main garden. A lot of insects love parsley so much they'll choose to go eat it and leave the main garden alone.
But make sure not to plant your tomatoes next to your potatoes as each will hurt the other's quality and yield.
Beans/Peas
One important thing to know is that bush beans and pole beans like different plants next to them. Bush beans are the easiest to plant because they like the company of many types of plants whereas pole beans are much more finicky. So if you don't want to plant both bush beans and pole beans and the prettiness of climbing beans is not a factor then the best choice is bush beans because there's just more flexibility with them. Still, there are plants that do best next to bush beans and vice versa. They are: peas, strawberries, anything in the cabbage family, potatoes, radishes, cucumber, corn, carrots and celery. But not tomatoes. So if you want to plant your carrots next to your tomatoes and your bush beans, plant the carrots between the tomatoes and the bush beans.
Pole beans are really best just next to carrots and peas. Think of pole beans as lithe ladies in a club who only deign to socialize with the carrots and peas.
Like with tomatoes, beans do well next to marigolds. So, like the carrots, it's a good idea to plant a row of marigolds between the tomatoes and beans. A second plan would be a row of interspersed carrots and marigolds between the tomatoes and beans with basil in the same row with the tomatoes. These combinations also make a very pretty garden. And when the tomatoes are ripe, it's so nice to pick a few leaves of basil while picking the tomatoes and cook them together, very tasty indeed!
Peas do well next to potatoes, spinach, radishes, sweet peppers, beans, cucumbers, corn and strawberries and they also love being next to chicory.
Don't plant onions or garlic next to your beans and peas, though, as the haughty beans and peas don't like garlic's or onion's company. Instead, the beautiful, tall cosmos flowers complement beans and peas so planting cosmos near the end of your garden near a fence and the beans and peas beyond them right against the fence is a great option, especially because cosmos repel most of the insects, too.
Lettuce
Lettuce is the best choice in a kitchen garden when one needs to be choosy due to lack of space since a fresh salad all summer from one's own garden of course usually includes a crispy lettuce and the price of a head of lettuce is enormous compared to the price of one package of lettuce seeds. The best package of lettuce seeds to choose is a mixed lettuce pack. The reason is obvious: when the mixed lettuce comes up they will do so at random, rocket next to iceberg next to green leaf next to romaine and one has the base of every possible tasty green salad one would wish for, all in the same row. You can just choose a few leaves from one or several of the plants - no need to tear up the whole plant - just let it keep producing more leaves. It's a super healthy way to create summer lunches and it's so fun to have a garden party and be able to tell your guests that the salad came right from your garden and it's really nice to know one's fare came from an organic, old-fashioned, ripened on the vine, so to speak, home garden.
Cucumbers
Cucumbers are best planted next to radishes, peas, sunflowers, basically all the herbs and those that have already been said, the bush beans and lettuce. It's interesting that these are the same vegetables that we normally expect in a green salad. This is probably because over the centuries it was these plants that thrived together in a small garden though I may just be inventing some folk history.
Like the tomato, the cucumber doesn't like to be next to a row of potatoes so if you choose to grow potatoes, keep them on the other side of the garden.
Onion/Garlic
Onions and garlic are special, as you probably already suspect from their strong flavor. While we like their scent, there are a lot of bugs that don't. So if you plant onions and garlic entirely around the outside edge of your vegetable garden (except next to the fence where you plant your peas and beans), there are many insects that will refuse to enter it.
Plant onions next to tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, cabbages and strawberries. Seeing a pattern? It's getting easier to know what seeds and plants to buy, too, isn't it.
That's a subject in itself, which plants are best to buy as small plants and which as seeds. Since the cost of seeds is far less than that of individual plants, you can get the most out of your money if you buy seeds that will in fact grow and thrive easily. The best I've found (as many seeds are difficult to germinate and grow from tiny) are basil, lettuce, nasturtium (though one must be nasty to nasturtiums, soaking them for at least three days before planting and then torturing them with too much water and then not enough - they love this kind of mean treatment!). Corn grows great from seeds but many people don't want to grow corn since it takes up a large part of the garden and grows so hugely that your neighbors, seeing the crop grow way higher than your fence will begin to suspect you're about to buy a cow and raise chickens (of course if you live where I do, that's hardly unusual). But fresh corn is great and if you have room and are the hardy type yourself, it's very satisfying to pull off that first ear of corn knowing you grew it from a tiny seed. Though that reminds me of the time I had a job at a corn shucking factory in northern Washington State. The company had figured out it was cheaper to just not have a roof on the building than build a sprinkler system over the corn. So we all had to wear raincoats and rainhats (as it rains constantly in Washington, for those who don't know that already). We women stood on each side of a huge conveyor belt. The corn with all the green stuff around it would go into a machine and then shoot out half and badly-shucked corn on to our conveyor belt where we were supposed to grab it and finish shucking it and then throw it back on the belt. It got to be sometimes just like an I Love Lucy episode when the partly-shucked corn would suddenly shoot out in droves on to the belt and we couldn't grab it and shuck it fast enough. We also had to wear ear plugs because the factory was so loud it would damage our eardrums and being all night long, since I was on the graveyard shift, it was freezing cold! Needless-to-say, my entire professional shucking career lasted one night. The next day I got a job as fry cook for the local A & W Root Beer hamburger place. But I digress.
Where was I? Oh yes. Melons also grow well from seeds but they do take a lot of room. But a watermelon or even better, a canteloupe or musk melon are really pretty plants that grow viney along the ground and fresh organic melons are so very juicy and delicious. Just don't plant too many unless you have a huge space for your garden.
Sweet Peppers
With peppers there is only one plant that is especially good next to it and that is the gentle pea. Sweet peppers are of course great in a green salad so it's a good plan to plant the peppers at the edge of the garden with the peas climbing up poles or fences next to it and next to that any of the wonderful plants that also do well next to peas.
Spinach
Spinach adds that beautiful deep dark green to the lighter greens in your garden. It does well planted next to any of the lettuces, radish, peas and strawberries.
Potatoes
There are a couple of problems with growing potatoes. Unless the soil is perfect they tend to grow kind of disappointingly tiny and since they're so cheap at the supermarket, it's kind of a let down to try to grow them. The other problem is that a lot of plants don't do well near potatoes and in a small garden this can be a big problem. The plants that don't like potatoes are tomatoes, cucumber, squash and sunflowers. Potatoes do well next to beans and peas if you want to give them a try.
Asparagus
Asparagus is my favorite veg and I remember how well my dad used to grow it. It makes a very delicate, lovely plant, too, very nice in a garden. Plus it's an expensive vegetable at the grocer's so it's worth giving growing it a go. The only problem is that it takes a few years to begin to yield a satisfying crop, really about four years, though maybe three if you're lucky. So if you're into instant gratification from your garden, don't depend on the languid asparagus. But, if you don't mind waiting and can see your asparagus the first few years as a very nice decorative plant for your garden, in a few years you will have succulent, fabulous organic asparagus to cook.
The asparagus does very well next to the tomato though not any other plant. It can also be planted alone in its own patch in another part of the garden as it does grow best as a patch and is very pretty alone, very tall and wispy fine. Parsley does well with asparagus so if you want to plant the parsley, as suggested above, a bit away from the rest of your garden, you can plant it at the base of the asparagus, since the asparagus is far taller, and they will look wonderful together, the lofty asparagus at the back with the low, lacy parsley in front.
Herbs
Besides the obvious delight of fresh herbs to use in your cooking, the greatest value of an herb garden are herbs that are really terrific at repelling all kinds of insects and luckily some of the most tasty herbs repell the most insects. Those that do this are oregano, coriander and marjoram. The other best herb to grow to repel insects are the various mints. The only thing to consider with mint is that it can take over the garden, springing up where you least expect it. It's very aggressively intrusive so the best thing is to plant a mint or different mints in pots and place them near the garden.
Chamomile is great next to cabbage and onions. Basil is great next to tomatoes and also asparagus. Chives repel aphids so it's a very good plant next to your roses. Chervil grown next to radishes makes your radishes taste hot!
Like I said, basil grows well from seeds. Sage grows pretty well from seeds but it's slow so if you don't want to wait, buy small sage plants. Basil will shoot up from seeds. Chives can be grown from seeds but the shoots are always so very thin so I'd start my chives from small plants. Oregano and thyme, also, are best grown from small plants.
Beneficial Flowers
In California, where I'm from, you don't very often see a vegetable garden that is filled also with flowers (not just flowers around the edge but intermixed with the vegetables and herbs) but in Kansas this is a regular sight and it's really beautiful.
Marigolds, like mint, can take over but do grow well in pots and repel many kinds of insects but it's pretty easy to keep those portly marigolds in line and I usually plant them without worry between my tomatoes and basil. Petunias repel insects that eat beans so a patch of them near your beans is a good idea. Cosmos are terrific. They grow very easily from seeds, bloom for months and months until late autumn, reseed themselves or you can gather their seeds when the flower petals wilt and plant them elsewhere. The seeds look like tiny straight spears, revealed when the petals are gone. Cosmos have very delicate, pretty leaves and grow tall so they're great, for example, next to the side of a house or fence. When I first bought my house in Enid, Oklahoma and, like a lot of people who just bought a house, had hardly a dollar left, I spent a dime on one package of cosmos seeds, tossed them along the bare side of the house by the gravel driveway and man, if they didn't grow as tall and thick as shrubs in record time and blossomed the whole growing season. It's amazing how huge an amount of beautiful plants one small package of cosmos seeds can create. They're one of the best buys out there.
Coreopsis and geranium are also great bug repellers. They're best started from small plants.
The easily grown from seeds morning glory is great to plant with the pole beans or climbing peas and will provide an abundant of lovely climbing blooms all summer long. Morning glory also repels insects from both melons and corn. Asters are a usual flower in a Kansas veggie garden as they also repel most bugs as does the chrysanthemum and calendula.
Bees
The last but very important subject is bees. Bees, of course, are essential to a garden, especially if you have fruit trees. There are many plants that attract bees so it's very good to have some of them in your garden. Bee-attracting plants include mint, marjoram, lemon balm, hyssop, coriander, catnip and basil and of course, flowers.
In closing, I want to tell you about a really wonderful seed catalogue. It's from the Seed Savers Exchange. I found out about it myself when I was helping my friend Lila look on the web for information about the Cherokee Trail of Tears because her great-grandmother was Cherokee and was one of the those who had been forced to walk that long terrible path from the Southeast to Oklahoma. Part of the article we read talked about the Trail of Tears Bean, which is also called the Cherokee Black Bean. It said many Native Americans survived only because they brought that bean with them. We discovered from that this terrific seed source called Seed Savers Exchange, which is a group of people who harvest precious, heritage seeds for sale, one of them being the Cherokee Trail of Tears Bean. I've put the link to their catalogue site in the right column if you're interestd. I love just reading the descriptions of the seeds they offer. The French gourmet vegetable seeds are the ones I love the most.
