Companion planting helps vegetable gardens shine

What do you really want from your vegetable garden?

Food, of course. But surely, food that's healthy and safe — and while you're at it, why not opt for beauty to the eye and enticement for beneficial insects and pollinators? Companion planting of vegetables and culinary herbs addresses all of these and more.

When the Rodale Institute, founders of Organic Gardening magazine, began touting the use of "companion plants" to serve as "bait" for bugs that would ordinarily attack a certain vegetable crop over a half-century ago, the secondary benefit of beauty soon became apparent. This, in itself, was important because it manifested a problem to which no one had as yet paid much attention.

As people began missing a variety of plants according to how attractive they looked together, some negative results ensued: Some plants just don't like each other.

More research followed and today, we can reap the benefits of all the decades of trial and error to be assured of beautiful, healthy, fruitful gardens. So, as winter begins to turn to spring as you plan your garden layout and peruse the seed catalogs, consider the findings which follow for the garden of your dreams.

First, we'll explore a list of vegetable crops and their likes and dislikes. After establishing the veggies that "like" each other, we'll add a list of herbs and the vegetables they help.

This way, you can plan your vegetable garden in a "friendly" manner, and then determine the herbs you want to place in and among the plants or rows. By the way, you'll note that I listed strawberries among the vegetables and not the herbs - but do plan your veggie garden around an existing patch - they're a beneficial plant.

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.

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 an 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.

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Some companion plants serve as “trap crops” –drawing the foliage/bulb eaters and their larvae 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).

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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 them in pots among the roses through the summer and bring them in to brighten the kitchen in the winter.

    Valle Novak
  

Editor's note: For many years, Valle Novak wrote gardening and cooking columns for the Daily Bee. "Weekend Gardener" and "Country Chef" became renowned for their humor, information, and common-sense advice on how to do everything from planting to cooking. She left behind many columns to delight her many fans. This is one such column, originally published on Feb. 4, 2001.