18 Plants That Should Always Be Planted Together

By Tara Dodrill
February 15, 2019 07:51

Companion planting can not only help your growing plants thrive, but deter pest infestations that can greatly diminish your harvest yield. Grouping specific plants together can also help prevent nutrient depletion in soil.
Some common garden plants actually curtail the ability to thrive when they are either planted close to each other or near specific trees and bushes that are growing near your gardening areas. Keeping the border around your growing plots clear of debris and harmful trees, like the Black Walnut, will help prevent both yield problems and eliminate places harmful insects winter over or make their homes during the gardening season.
Benefits Of Companion Planting
Soil Enhancement
Using companion planting techniques to group together crops that can infuse additional nitrogen into the soil can improve your harvest.
Beneficial Insects
Not all bugs are bad. Courting beneficial bugs into your garden and providing them a home in a grouping of companion plants just might bolster your yield. Helpful insects do not eat your plants, but the bugs that dine upon them.
Physical Support
Some plants, such as pole beans, can grow steadily while providing support to other crops – in this case, corn stalks. When plants become heavily laden with vegetables, they can sag and cause breakage that will kill the plant of allow harmful bugs and bacteria to infiltrate it.
Protective Herbs And Flowers
Planting a border of specific herbs and marigold plants around the border of the garden, and in with some companion plant groups, they will protect the most important crops from harmful insects and wind damage.
Trap Crops
This type of companion planting use both herbs and ornamental plants that urge harmful bugs in their direction only to sicken or kill them after being snacked upon. Trap crops like geraniums an borage should be planted either protective herbs and flowers at the border of the garden or only several feet in front of the protective border as a first line of defense against harmful insects. Both geraniums and borage should be planted in the vicinity of crops that Japanese beetles love – like broccoli and cabbage. The scent of the plants will draw the highly destructive beetles in their direction and then kill them after being chewed upon.
Nasturtiums are also superb trap crops to ue in your companion plant layout. Beetles of nearly all types and aphids will be attracted to them. Once the nasturtiums are filled with the harmful insects, carefully remove them from the ground and drown or burn the insects.
Related: Make Your Own Peppermint Oil – The Best Insect Repellent
Shelter
When plants sensitive to either sunlight or wind, or both, are overexposed to such weather extremes, they can die within days. Following companion planting protocols, less environmentally fragile plants in a grouping can protect the others, without harming their own growing course.
Walnut Tree Dangers
These trees should never be anywhere near your garden. A single black walnut tree located within 100 feet of the growing space will destroy all of your diligent companion planting efforts.
These release juglone, a chemical compound, into the ground. Juglone provokes wilting and a yellowing of leaves – and even untimely death of otherwise healthy plants. The chemical compound in black walnut trees is present not only on branches and leaves, but in the nuts that lay on the ground. Juglone is also secreted through black walnut tree’s root system.
How much juglone is excreted by the black walnut trees will vary by season. The percentage of juglone present in the tree hits its peak as the nut start to reach maturity. It takes at least two months for the chemical to be removed from the soil after cutting down the tree.
All breeds of walnut trees make juglone, including hickory, pecan, and butternut trees, but the black walnut boasts the highest percentage of this crop killer. Plants that are the most vulnerable to juglone include tomatoes, pepper varieties, eggplant, and potatoes. Onions, corns, beets, and carrots tolerate the chemical compound better than others.
Walnut tree leaves can be composted safely but not until two weeks after they have fallen to the ground or remain on a cut branch. It takes at least 14 days for air, water, and environmental bacteria to detoxify the matter once it has been separated from the tree.
Related: 10 Trees Every Survivalist Should Know and Why
Asparagus, Cabbage, Peppers, Tomatoes, Rhubarb, Eggplant, Alfalfa, Narcissus, Potatoes, Jack in the Pulpit, Columbine, Crab Apple Trees, Chrysanthemum – select varieties, Phlox, Nectarine Trees, Cherry Trees, Bugleweed, Lilies, Hydrangea, Spiderwort ,White Birch Trees, Bellflowers, Ginger, Lilac Bushes, Plum Trees, Peach Trees, Lamb’s Ears, Hollyhocks, Rhododendrons, Hostas, Geraniums, Crocus, Wood Ferns should never be cultivated near juglone producing trees.
Garden Companion Plant Guide

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Companion Plant
How To Group Or Use It
Basil
• Repels mosquitoes
• Improves flavor and growth of tomatoes
• Never play near rue.
Bush Beans
• Plant with corn, cauliflower, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, beets, cucumbers, summer savory, potatoes, strawberries, catnip, marigolds
• Never plant with garlic, onions, shallots, or fennel.
• Green beans help curtail potato beetles.
Pole Beans
• Plant with marigolds, radishes, and corn.
• Never plant with bets, garlic, potatoes, kohlrabi, marigold, leeks, or shallots.
Beets

• Plant with onions, bush beans, cauliflower, bush beans, broccoli, cabbage, chard, kohlrabi, and Brussels sprouts,
• Never plant near charlock, mustard, or pole beans.
Borage
• Plant with squash, tomatoes, and strawberries.
• Borage curtails tomato worms.
Brussels Sprouts and Broccoli
• Plant near thyme, carrots, beets, dill buckwheat, onions, chamomile, calendula, sage marigolds, hyssop, rosemary, nasturtiums, and wormwood.
• Never plant with strawberries.
Cauliflower and Cabbage
• Plant with chard, broccoli, celery, brussels sprouts, tomatoes, and spinach, and tomatoes.
• Never plant near strawberries.
Cantaloupe
• Plant near corn
Carrots
• Plant near chives, leeks, sage, cabbage, rosemary, peas, early potatoes, radishes, lettuce, wormwood, and salsify,
• Leeks, wormwood, and onions can deter carrot flies.
Chives

• Plant near grapes, peas, apples, tomatoes, berries, roses, and carrots.
• Chives deter aphids, and Japanese beetles and help their companion crops thrive.
Corn
• Plant near early potatoes, melons, squash,pumpkins, green beans, cucumbers, and peas.
• Soybeans will help prevent chinch bugs.

Cucumbers
• Plant with radishes, early potatoes, corn, sunflowers, green beans, cabbage.
• Never plant with late potatoes.
• Radishes will ward of various types of beetles that attack cucumbers.
Dill
• Plant with onions, broccoli, lettuce cucumbers, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage.
• Never plant near carrots.
• Dill will bolster the growth of cabbage plants and may improve flavor.
Eggplant
• Plant near potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and green beans.
Garlic
• Plant near fruit trees, cane fruits, cabbage, tomatoes, and roses.
• Never plant with peas or green beans.
• Garlic will deter Japanese beetle and aphids. They also help prevent blight in late potatoes.
Kale
• Plant near buckwheat, marigolds, cabbage, nasturtiums, and aromatic herbs.
• Never plant with pole beans or strawberries.
Lettuce
• Plant with strawberries, beets, carrots, radishes, and parsnips.
• Never plant with cabbage.
Mustard
• Plant amid fruit trees, legumes, alfalfa cover crops, and grapes.
Onions
• Plant with carrots, beets, chamomile, cabbage, parsnips, and lettuce.
• Never plant with green beans or peas.
• Onions deter maggots and a myriad a of potentially harmful insects.
Oregano
• Plant as a garden border to repel destructive insects. Oregano is safe to plant near any standard garden crop or fruit producing tree or bush.
Parsley
• Plant with tomatoes, corn, and roses.
Parsnips
• Plant near onions, wormwood, and radishes.
• Onion and wormwood plants will deter root maggots from feasting upon the parsnip crop.
Peas
• Plant near corn, carrots, early potatoes, green beans, turnips, cucumbers, and radishes.
• Never plant with onions, shallots, garlic, or leeks.
Peppers
• Plant next to carrots, onions, tomatoes, basil, eggplant, parsley, and eggplant.
• Never plant near fennel or kohlrabi.
Potatoes
• Plant near cabbage, flax, peas, hemp, marigolds, squash, basil, eggplant, green and other bean varieties.
• Never plant near apple trees, walnut trees, raspberry bushes, cucumbers, pumpkins, birch trees, cherry trees, tomatoes, or sunflowers.
• Basil will ward off potatoes beetles.
Radishes
• Plant near peas, lettuce, chervil, peas, melons, cucumbers, nasturtiums, and root crops.
• Never pant near hyssop.
Rosemary
• Plant next to any type of bean crop, carrots, and cabbage.
• Rosemary can help thwart carrot flies, cabbage moths, and bean beetles.
Sage
• Plant sage next to carrots, cabbage, and tomatoes.
• Never plant sage near cucumbers.
• Sage can thwart carrot flies, cabbage moths, and help the tomatoes grow.
Soybeans
• Plant next to corn and potatoes.
• Soybeans can kill weeds and enrich the nutrient content of the soil.
Spinach
• Plant with or near cauliflower, eggplant, celery, and strawberries
Strawberries
• Plant near borage, spinach, pyrethrum, bush beans, and lettuce.
Sunflowers
• Plant sunflowers with or near cucumbers.
• Never plant with any type of potato variety.
• Sunflowers offer shade for plants and can serve as a trellis for growing plants.
Swiss Chard
• Plant with kohlrabi, onions, and bush beans.
• Never plant with pole beans.
Tarragon
• Plants near or in with any standard garden vegetables.
• Tarragon can bolster plant growth and enhance flavor of companion plants.
Thyme
• Plant near any standard garden vegetables.
• Thyme deters cabbage moths.
Tomatoes
• Plant next to onions, basil, carrots, asparagus, mustard, cabbage, mustard, rosemary,stinging nettles, gooseberries, sage, and parsley.
• Never plant with walnut trees, fennel, kohlrabi, or early potatoes.
Rutabagas and Turnips

• Plant near or with peas.
• Never plant with knotweed or mustard. Either vegetable will diminish the growth of these plants.

After doing a walk around your garden area to clear it of walnut trees or debris bugs could thrive in, sketch out your rows or container alignment with the border areas first followed by companion plant groupings to help give your crops the best start to life – and your family a bountiful harvest.