Garden Mama and Companion Planting
If you follow me at all, you know that this time of year I am GIDDY with excitement for my garden. I grew up in the country with both sets of grandparents and my parents gardening, and I have so many memories of digging and planting and harvesting. My dad's parents had a huge garden, the kind you need a legit tractor for tilling, etc, and they grew all of the things, including my Grandma Bridgeman's amazing rose garden. If you grew up in the country, you might have the same memories of shelling peas, shucking corn and snapping green beans. It was a lot of work, but oh so worth it.
My mother's dad, my PaPa, grew up farming too, and I swear he grew the best tomatoes I've ever eaten in my life. When I spent summer days there, we would get up early and go out to the garden with a salt shaker and pick the biggest tomatoes off the vine, wipe the dirt off, sprinkle on the salt and eat them like apples. To this day the smell of a tomato vine is one of my most favorite smells on earth.
Even though I grew up with it and have had my own garden for about 8 years now, I still consider myself a beginner gardener. There is so much more I need to learn! But every year I learn a little bit more, get a little bit better, benefit from some mistakes and plan for the next year. My lessons and experiments this year are about Companion Planting: the idea being that certain plants, herbs and veggies do better when planted near one another. It is such a fascinating concept to me and even though this is my first year trying to implement the concept, it is already paying off. I've never been one to plant flowers (other than marigolds because they keep pests away from the veggies) so this has been the experimental part for me. Other than flowering bushes like hydrangeas and peonies, I've always been nervous to work with flowers. But the more I learned about companion planting, the more excited I was to try. Here are the basic reasons I decided to try companion planting:
*The right kind of flowers can attract pollinators and good insects to your veggies
*Certain flowers and herbs repel pests that could damage your garden
*Grouping particular plants together help them both flourish and grow stronger
*It's pretty!!!
My two favorite gardening books this year are Vegetables Love Flowers
and The Old Farmer's Almanac Vegetable Gardener's Handbook
Both give great, simple to follow advice and instructions.
My mother's dad, my PaPa, grew up farming too, and I swear he grew the best tomatoes I've ever eaten in my life. When I spent summer days there, we would get up early and go out to the garden with a salt shaker and pick the biggest tomatoes off the vine, wipe the dirt off, sprinkle on the salt and eat them like apples. To this day the smell of a tomato vine is one of my most favorite smells on earth.
Even though I grew up with it and have had my own garden for about 8 years now, I still consider myself a beginner gardener. There is so much more I need to learn! But every year I learn a little bit more, get a little bit better, benefit from some mistakes and plan for the next year. My lessons and experiments this year are about Companion Planting: the idea being that certain plants, herbs and veggies do better when planted near one another. It is such a fascinating concept to me and even though this is my first year trying to implement the concept, it is already paying off. I've never been one to plant flowers (other than marigolds because they keep pests away from the veggies) so this has been the experimental part for me. Other than flowering bushes like hydrangeas and peonies, I've always been nervous to work with flowers. But the more I learned about companion planting, the more excited I was to try. Here are the basic reasons I decided to try companion planting:
*The right kind of flowers can attract pollinators and good insects to your veggies
*Certain flowers and herbs repel pests that could damage your garden
*Grouping particular plants together help them both flourish and grow stronger
*It's pretty!!!
My two favorite gardening books this year are Vegetables Love Flowers
and The Old Farmer's Almanac Vegetable Gardener's Handbook
Both give great, simple to follow advice and instructions.
I also found this chart, which was super helpful because I am such a visual person
So, based on everything I read, I decided to go with the following pairings this year:
1. Tomatoes and Basil
I planted a basil plant in each row of my tomatoes. Not only do they smell great together, my basil plants are way bigger than they have ever been.
2. Tomatillos and Narsturtium
Narsturtium is an edible flower with beautiful brightly colored blooms. It is an excellent pollinator and since tomatillos need at two plants to pollinate one another, (I have four plants) it makes sense to invite the bees to visit.
3. Dill and Cucumbers
The main reason I grow a TON of cucumbers is because I love to make pickles. Dill pickles to be precise. So obviously I need dill! I planted two dill plants for each of my four cucumber vines. Cucumbers produce soooooo many veggies, so I knew I would need a lot of fresh dill.
4. Cilantro and lettuces
Cilantro attracts good bugs like ladybugs and lacewings that prey on pests like aphids, and aphids love to destroy vulnerable lettuces. So I planted lots of cilantro in a row directly in front of my gem lettuces.
5. Finally, I planted marigolds, sunflowers and MORE narsturtium throughout every garden bed because they attract all the good pollinators. Also, as I mentioned above, marigolds are a well known pest repellent that keep yucky bugs off of your delicious veggies. I basically have a border of marigolds around each garden bed.
Each year I learn something new that I add into my planning for the following year's garden and this year the success of companion planting is definitely my #1 valuable lesson. Who knows, next year I might have an entire bed dedicated to pollinators and wildflowers!
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