The deal with companion planting

So, good call all you Facebooking Indie Farmers, on picking companion planting for today's blog post.

Cucumbers and nasturtium - they make the cutest couple

Companion planting is one of those topics that gets tossed around in gardeny circles and, like one of you said, brings with it some measure of "wizardry". And while wizardry is cool because it implies that there are awesome results involved, it also comes with a heavy dose of mystery and mystery is not helpful when you're trying to do something that produces an actual result.

We want to dispel mystery when it comes to vegetable gardening because we want you to grow lots of food and mystery does not put tomatoes on the vine, so to speak. So, let's keep the awesome results of companion planting and ditch the mysterious whimsy that can plague this useful practice.

We're not really into whimsy, is what I'm saying, but we are REALLY into growing food. So, there you go.

Why are we even doing this?
It's not because we like to make our lives complicated, that's for sure. It's also not because we think the vegetable garden needs prettying up. It's because we want to grow a lot of food and this is one thing we can do to help that along.

We use companion planting for a few main reasons:

1. To repel insect pests
2. To attract beneficials
3. To create some kind of helpful environment for your crops to grow

The most famous beneficial insect - The Aphid Monster, aka - ladybeetle.

You'll get other benefits from companion planting, like pretty scenery or cut flowers for bouquets, but if you want to focus on prettying up a space or filling your fancy vases, take your butt over to the perennial landscaping and wave your herbaceous paintbrush around where it'll be most useful. The vegetable garden is for growing vegetables.

How do we even do this?
One way to approach companion planting, and the way we do it, is to look at the crops we're growing and figure out what those crops need that a companion plant can give them.

So, in the case of cucumbers and other cucurbits, for example, we want to repel the marauding advances of the sap sucking cucumber beetle. You can use a row cover over the plants to keep the beetles from connecting with the plants until they start to flower and/or you can plant nasturtium which grow a lofty semi-dense cover of foliage and flowers around your cucumbers.

Nasturtium and cucumbers - the early days

The nasturtium flowers look a lot like cucurbit flowers (particularly the yellow ones), which is one reason this may be effective, but the plants give shelter to beneficial spiders and other predators, keep the plants from stressing due to excessive heat and evaporation, and create a physical obstacle for cucumber beetles, which may be other reasons for its awesomeness.

Bonus - Nasturtium just happens to have edible flowers and look great in cut flower bouquets, so...score.

What about tomatoes? Don't we all want as many tomatoes as possible? Yes. The answer is yes. This is one reason that we plant basil around our tomatoes. Some studies show that when basil is planted around tomatoes to the tune of one basil plant every 10 inches or so, you can increase tomato yields by up to 20%, but you still need to water, feed and care for your tomato plants to keep them healthy.

Tomatoes and basil (...and nasturtium because it goes everywhere. In a good way.)

If you want to repel the monstrous chewing power of the tomato hornworm, marigolds can attract the small but mighty brachonid wasp that will parasitize and kill tomato hornworms. Which makes up for the fact that marigolds are hideous.

That's right - I just came right out and said it - they're ugly. I wouldn't plant marigolds unless I knew they did good things in the garden, which they do A LOT, so there.

The kids used to beat me up in school, but now they're all jealous of my celebrity.

Does your lettuce always bolt before you have other gardeny stuff to make salad? That's because it doesn't like the heat that your other salad crops might like and it would appreciate some shade, already. So give it some.

Plant a trellis or tepee of pole beans over your lettuce to shade it from the afternoon sun's scorchy rays. The lettuce is a light feeder, so won't deplete the soil's nutrients and beans are a nitrogen fixer, so a pairing like this actually leaves your soil in better condition than it was in to begin with. Good times.

Pole beans and lettuce - a power couple.

So, when you're looking for good companions for your vegetable crops, figure out what you're trying to repel, attract or create with your companion planting and then find a companion plant that does that thing.

No whimsical planting because oh that looks pretty there or oh I've run out of places to plant cut flowers so I'll just stick them right here oh yes that's fine, OK?

Now, go grow some food.