26 Plants to Grow Side-By-Side

Seasoned gardeners know that a assorted mix of vegetation will make for a nutritious and gorgeous garden. Numerous consider that certain plant mixtures have amazing (even mysterious) powers to aid just about every other improve. Scientific examine of the method, identified as companion planting, has verified that some mixtures have serious gains special to those people pairings.

Companions aid just about every other improve and use garden house efficiently. Tall vegetation, for instance, supply shade for sunshine-delicate shorter vegetation. Vines can protect the floor while tall stalks improve skywards, permitting two vegetation to occupy the similar patch.

Some couplings also stop pest problems. Vegetation can repel harmful organisms or lure the poor bugs away from a lot more fragile species.

These mixtures of vegetation do way far better, collectively:

Roses and Garlic

Gardeners have been planting garlic with roses for eons because the bulbs can aid to repel rose pests. Garlic chives are almost certainly just as repellent, and their tiny purple or white bouquets in late spring seem fantastic with rose bouquets and foliage.

Marigolds and Melons

Particular marigold versions control nematodes in the roots of melon without the need of working with chemical therapies.

Tomatoes and Cabbage

Tomatoes repel diamondback moth larvae, which can chew big holes in cabbage leaves.

Cucumbers and Nasturtiums

The nasturtium’s vining stems make them a fantastic companion rambling between your increasing cucumbers and squash vegetation, implies Sally Jean Cunningham, master gardener and creator of Wonderful Backyard garden Companions. Nasturtiums apparently repel cucumber beetles, but they can also provide as a habitat for predatory bugs like spiders and floor beetles.

Peppers and Pigweed

Leafminers desired both of those pigweed (also identified as amaranthus) and ragweed to pepper vegetation in a examine at the Coastal Plains Experiment Station in Tifton, Georgia. Just be careful to take away the bouquets ahead of the weeds set seed.

Cabbage and Dill

“Dill is a fantastic companion for cabbage family vegetation, this sort of as broccoli and brussels sprouts,” Cunningham states. The cabbages assistance the floppy dill, while the dill draws in the useful wasps that control cabbage worms and other pests.

Corn and Beans

The beans bring in beneficial bugs that prey on corn pests this sort of as leafhoppers, drop armyworms, and leaf beetles. The vines can also climb up the corn stalks.

Lettuce and Tall Bouquets

Nicotiana (flowering tobacco) and cleome (spider flower) give lettuce the light shade it grows best in.

Radishes and Spinach

Planting radishes between your spinach will attract leafminers away from the nutritious greens. The problems the leafminers do to radish leaves isn’t going to stop the radishes from increasing properly underground.

Potatoes and Sweet Alyssum

The sweet alyssum has very small bouquets that bring in fragile beneficial bugs, this sort of as predatory wasps. Plant sweet alyssum alongside bushy crops like potatoes, or let it unfold to sort a living floor protect below arching vegetation like broccoli. Reward: The alyssum’s sweet fragrance will scent your garden all summe longr.

Cauliflower and Dwarf Zinnias

The nectar from the dwarf zinnias lures ladybugs and other predators that aid guard cauliflower.

Collards and Catnip

Studies have found that planting catnip alongside collards minimizes flea-beetle problems on the collards. The fragrant plant may possibly also aid repel mosquitoes.

Strawberries and Love-In-A-Mist

Tall, blue-flowered really like-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena) “appears to be great planted in the middle of a huge row of strawberries,” Cunningham states.