Interplanting

[cHeroKee]

If you want to ensure the performance of your garden vegetables, companion planting can be a big help. Here are some good combinations for your garden:
? Beans and peas add nutrients to the soil. Interplant them with tomatoes, corn, potatoes, rosemary, celery or marigolds. Marigolds and potatoes repel Mexican bean beetles. Rosemary repels insects. Celery, corn and tomatoes improve growth.
? Interplant cabbage and cabbage-family plants with herbs such as rosemary, sage, and thyme which repel insects. To help confuse insect pests, interplant them with clover and lettuce.
? Interplant carrots with peas, radishes, or sage to improve their flavor. Peas also add nutrients to the soil. Onions, leaks and rosemary help repel root maggot flies. Onions also repel carrot rust flies.
? Interplant melons with corn and peas to improve growth and flavor. Radishes and nasturtiums repel cucumber beetles.
? Interplant lettuce with beets, carrots, cucumbers, cabbage-family crops, radishes, and strawberries. All will enhance lettuce growth.
Separate plants that do not grow well together:
? Beetroot with pole beans
? Onions with peas and beans
? Cabbage with strawberries, potatoes and pole beans
? Pumpkin with potatoes
? Tomatoes with cabbage and potatoes
? Sunflowers with potatoes

[dlcorrell]

I am getting ready to start my garden (I have a greenhouse) and this information is wonderful.

Thank you
Donna

[Toni]

Thanks for the information.
Toni

[level3Navigator]

I just completed a great book called "Carrots Love Tomatoes" which is dealing with this very subject. I'm compiling a spreadsheet, condensing the information into it so I can very quickly plan my garden based on plant likes / dislikes and insect control. I'll post it once I am done (hopefully today if I can get my wife Misha to help me with it :-) ).

Although the spreadsheet will give you a good overview, I do recommend the book as it contains lots of good herbal remedy information, too. It also lists a lot of common weeds, which I am not including in the spreadsheet, but which you might find interesting both as potential beneficials for your garden or as herbal medicine.

[bokbadok]

Carrots Love Tomatoes is helpful, and I know from personal experience that beans and peas do not grow well near garlic. So be sure to keep those two separated.

My biggest problem has always been controlling squash bugs in my pumpkin patch. Last fall I went to a local corn maze/pumpkin patch farm and they said that they plant sunflowers and pigweed among the pumpkin plants to repel the bugs. I'm going to try that this year.

Interplanting is great if you're an accomplished gardener, but it isn't do or die.

[level3Navigator]

Here is the spreadsheet, although it is no doubt incomplete... but there is still lots of interesting information there. Good luck!

[LarnaE]

We grew some corn that had beautiful ears, but they had only a few kernals on them. It was very strange. I am wondering what the cause of this is.

[level3Navigator]

We grew some corn that had beautiful ears, but they had only a few kernals on them. It was very strange. I am wondering what the cause of this is.

Failure to fertilize. This can be caused by regrowing a hybrid variety (some seed manufacturers do this intentionally so you have to keep buying seed from them). It also may be due to your corn being too sheltered, i.e. not enough wind to help the pollen to move off those top "wheat like" stalks to the "silk" of the corn ear.

[Toni]

I grew some corn spring before last and had the same problem. I only had a few corn plants. This year, I am planning to plant a block of corn so they'll have a better chance of fertilizing (we have plenty of wind here).

[goldilocks]

Sounds like a pollination problem to me. Block planitng is better and you need to see lot of bees buzzing aorund or you will have to self pollinate.

[phylm]

Do you know the real name of the "pigweed" that he mentioned? Could it be amaranth, by chance? The pigweed that I am familiar with is what we call lamb's quarters, and are a very good wild green. This plant has a white "powder" under its leaves that disappears when boiled. Very mild green that we like better than spinach.
phylm

[Cowboy]

Great info here! Thanks for the spreadsheet. :l0 (2):

[Abinadi]

I just love you all who get to plant now and I have waist deep snow in parts yet with only a 1/3 of the yard where I can see grass that is brown. I did see some signs of green by the mailbox this weekend.
We had more snow this morning and now its gone.
Oh for a greenhouse.

Abinadi