Grow perfect companions in your garden

If you could do just one thing for a successful garden, I would have to recommend companion planting hands down. The second most important thing — to my mind — is natural pest management. Why just those two? Because they are the keys to complete garden success. Interaction between compatible plants and no artificial additions — like pesticides, herbicides and fungicides — make for a strong and healthy garden where ladybugs and lacewings kill the aphids, and bees, butterflies and moths can safely gather nectar and pollinate plants without dying.

While intercropping, trap cropping and crop rotation — combined with other sustainable practices that include seed selection, soil care, deadheading and mulching — are also keys to successful gardens, those first two actions — given time and trust — will ensure gardens that will thrive and produce for decades, .

Companions, be they vegetables, herbs, flowers, berries and/or ornamentals — and even some “weeds”, serve as growth enhancer or trap crop.* Since garden planting time is nearly upon us, knowing which plants will benefit (or harm) each other is vital for a healthy, successful garden.

Following is the tried and true (often updated) list begun many years ago by Rodale Gardens. Choose the veggie/herb companions to interplant from our chart to provide protection and beauty to your personal garden landscape. “B” will stand for beneficial and “E” for enemy depending on their tolerance of or antipathy to certain garden neighbors.

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Asparagus: B — tomatoes, parsley, basil;

Green and/or wax beans: B — corn, potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, cauliflower, cabbage, petunias, oregano, mustard, summer savory, rosemary, larkspur; E — onions, garlic, gladiolus.

Pole beans: B — corn, squash, oregano, mustard, summer savory; E: onions, beets, sunflowers, Cole crops.

Beets: B: onions and Coles; E: pole beans, larkspur.

Coles: (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi): B: mint, dill, sage (and most aromatic herbs**), potatoes, celery, beets, onions, Feverfew (especially with cabbage); E: strawberries, tomatoes, pole beans, Rue.

Chinese cabbage (different from the American Cole crops): B — peas; E — pole beans.

Carrots: B — peas, lettuce, chives, tomatoes, onions, rosemary, sage; E — dill, anise

Chives: B — roses and ornamentals, most veggies; E — beans, dill, like anise, also harms carrots, but tomatoes as well (while enhancing cabbage, onion and lettuce);

Corn: B — potatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, squash.

Cucumbers: B — beans, corn, peas, radishes, sunflowers, Chamomile; E — aromatic herbs, potatoes.

Eggplant: B — beans, basil.

Fennel: While a valuable delicious bulb with licorice-flavored fronds, fennel is not friend to most anything in the garden. It is Enemy to slugs and snails however, so may work for you among Hostas. Otherwise, give it a private space with sunlight and rich soil away from the veggie garden;

Garlic: B — roses; E — beans and peas

Leeks: B — celery, carrots and onions; E — sage, peas, beans.

Lettuce: B — carrots, radishes, strawberries, cucumbers. E —Feverfew, chrysanthemums.

Melons: B — beans, corn, peas, radishes, thyme, sunflowers; E — potatoes, most aromatic herbs.

Onions: B — beets, strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce, chamomile, summer savory; E: Sage, peas, beans.

Parsley: B — tomatoes, asparagus, roses.

Peas: B -Most vegetables/herbs; E — onions, garlic, gladiolus, potatoes.

Peppers (Sweet bells/Hot): B — most vegetables and herbs; E — onions, garlic, gladiolus, potatoes.

Potatoes: B — beans, corn, cabbage, horseradish, eggplant, gladiolus, Lamium; E — pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, sunflowers, tomatoes, raspberries.

Pumpkins, gourds: (See squash).

Radishes: B — peas, nasturtiums, lettuce, chervil, cucumbers (planting lots of radishes with your peas and cukes will trap many harmful pests).

Roses: B — Borage, chives, garlic, lavender, leeks, mint, parsley, rosemary, rue, sage, santolina, thyme, wormwood (Artemisia), Tansy.

Rutabaga, turnips: Friends to peas, but NOT each other: Remember that these related crops (including radishes) will cross with each other, also with Chinese cabbage and Oriental mustard, so don’t plant together if you want true-to-species produce.

Squash (Summer and Winter): B — nasturtiums, corn, catnip/catmint. (Plant only one variety of squash per species to prevent crosses).

Spinach and Chard: B — strawberries — plant in the strawberry bed for mutual benefit.

Tomatoes: B — chives, borage, thyme, onions, parsley, asparagus, marigolds, carrots, mints, nasturtiums; E: Cole crops, potatoes, fennel.

Watercress/Mustards: Compatible with most vegetables and aromatic herbs.

* Some companion plants serve as “trap crops” — drawing the foliage/bulb eaters and their larva away from the main crop. A case in point is parsley, which serves as food for the swallowtail butterfly’s larvae — a striped green/black caterpillar — providing needed food for the beneficial larvae while still maintaining edibles for our own dinner tables. (Consider using extra “sacrifice” parsley as a beneficial ornament in the rose garden, and planting the kitchen parsley in the veggie garden or potager).

** Aromatic herbs:

Basil is an annual aromatic herb with the added bonus that deer hate it!

Dill — As an umbellifer, it draws a host of valuable pollinating insects.

Sage — Probably the most valuable of all the herbs you’ll ever grow, this hardy perennial shrub should have a permanent sunny place in every garden. Its flowers draw bees and hummingbirds, and it deters deer. (Consider growing it in a large pot to center in the garden).

Mint — Another bee/hummingbird magnet (and hated by deer).

Thyme — perennial that can serve as path borders or in beds of its own: Culinary thyme is an aromatic edible, while an ornamental bed of fibrous-rooted creeping flowered or woolly thyme not only allows itself to be walked on, but chokes out weeds, draws pollinating bees, and deters deer.

Rosemary — Beloved of roses and a must-have for a variety of cookery. Keep in pots among the roses through the summer and bring in to brighten the kitchen in the winter.

Valle Novak writes the Country Chef and Weekend Gardener columns for the Daily Bee. She can be reached at bcdailybee@bonnercountydailybee.com or by phone at 208-265-4688.