Companion Planting With Vegetables and Flowers

The right combos of vegetable, herb and flower companion plantings will save space and provide weed and pest control. Working with companion plants requires experimenting in your own garden, using the crops your family likes best, and allowing for an increase in leafy greens because they are such versatile companion plants.

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by AdobeStock/Lawrence
Grow sweet alyssum to provide nectar for hoverflies, which feed on aphids.

Each spring, I grow legions of onions and shallots from seed, and my biggest challenge is keeping them weeded. Last year, I planted pinches of arugula between the short rows of shallots, and the leafy, fast-growing arugula smothered any weeds and showed remarkably little damage from flea beetles, which often plague it. The arugula was ready to harvest just when the shallots needed room to grow. In a eureka moment, I realized I had discovered a vegetable companion-planting partnership I could use year after year to make my garden healthier and more productive.

The idea of “companion planting” has been around for thousands of years, during which time it has become so besmirched with bad science and metaphysics that many gardeners aren’t sure what it means. The current definition goes something like this: Companion planting is the establishment of two or more species in close proximity so that some cultural benefit, such as pest control or increased yield, may be achieved.

Historically, North American and European gardeners have based many of their attempts with companion planting on widely published charts, which were mostly derived from funky chemistry experiments using plant extracts in the 1930s. But it turns out many of the plant partnerships listed in these “traditional” companion-planting charts don’t actually work well. Reaping the benefits of companion planting is possible, though, as long as you look to time-tested crop combinations.

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