companion plants as part of organic methods?

novice_2009

14 years ago

Does anyone use companion planting as part of their organic gardening methods? Yes, I know there's a forum for that, but it's pretty dead. I think using companion planting in the vegetable garden is organic in nature, as it helps plant growth and deters pests. So, do any of you use it? Any combos that you found to work well? Please let me know about your experiences. thanks so much!!!

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (14)

Dan _Staley (5b Sunset 2B AHS 7)
14 years ago
Does anyone use companion planting as part of their organic gardening methods?

Of course.

Riotte's Carrots Love Tomatoes is my reference.

Any combos that you found to work well?

Depends upon the crop.

Purchase the book.

Dan
Kimmsr
14 years ago
Companion planting is part of organic gardening, although I find many people getting into organic gardening today do not know about it and that is the fault of those of us that have been organic gardening for years for failing to pass that information on. There are a number of good books available and there is a whole host of information on the web about companion planting and one of the best of those is linked below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Companion planting
Related Discussions
Companion plants for bulb plot?
Q
Comments (3)
There are any number of plants you could add to your plot, depending on the space you have. For instance, I have my roses and hydrangeas underplanted with all kinds of spring blooming bulbs. The bulbs come up and fill the space that only has empty branches in the winter and then by summer when the bushes fill in, the bulbs have gone dormant. Daylilies are very popular among bulbs, because the day lily foliage mimics and hides the bulb foliage as it goes dormant. The only tricky part is to not damage your bulbs when it's time to dig and divide the daylilies. Still, it's a great way to fill the space throughout the year. Ground covers are wonderful over bulbs: creeping phlox, mazus, mondo grass or liriope, just to name a few. You could also add some summer and fall blooming bulbs to your spring bulb bed: lilies, dahlias, crocosmia, etc. I'm not really good with bulbs that grow as far north as you are, but any good bulb book could help you there. And finally, annuals are perhaps the easiest and most versatile. Since your soil is loose and sandy, you won't have to dig very large or deep holes. Just ease your bedding plants into holes between your spring bulbs, and within a few weeks, the bed will be full of glorious color. P.S. No matter how many plants you have in a bed, if you want to control weeds, you need to 1. Keep several inches of mulch over the whole bed (pull it a couple inches away from the crowns of your plants). And 2. Hand pull the few weeds that manage to come up through the mulch. The first gardening book I ever read said if you can prevent any weed from making seed in your garden for three years in a row, you will have virtually no weed problems at all. I tried it, and it is absolutely true. I doubt if I spend an hour a YEAR pulling weeds, but I do bend over and pull them the very first time I notice them. It's good for the waistline too! :)
...See More
Companion planting question
Q
Comments (18)
Companion planting does work. Most important is knowing which plants do conflict. Every plant exudes something for a purpose. Most exudes are to enhance biological activity so able to obtain essential nutrients. Some exudes are defensive against disease, pest or infringement by other plants. If a plant is listed or demonstrated to be antagonistic to another, avoid close proximity planting. With rooting habits so varied it is best to separate by at least 10 feet. The Root Development link in an above post is a great one to understand how roots can develop in the best of soil conditions. A good companion often has benefits whether nutrient sharing, pest related repulsing or attracting beneficial insects. A mixed planting is more natural that mono cropping and does provide benefits when carefully matched. There is very little research published but there are many who have experienced good results. It can apply equally to crop rotations; some plants do better when following another; i.e. - heavy feeders after a legume is a prime example. Try it and make your own judgement. Use one of the many charts as a guide for planning. Allow each plant its own space for growth and be confident that they do get along great as neighbours.
...See More
Multipurpose Companion Plants for Edible Gardens
Q
Comments (23)
Susan, I love your light stand and always will love it. I realize it was the best solution for you, but if I told Tim I wanted to buy one of those, he'd hand me a hammer and tell me to build my own....which is why I have the one that I have. : ) Mine is hidden away out of sight in a room where guests rarely venture, although anyone who knows me and who knows I raise my own seedlings always asks to go upstairs and see it in the spring. So much for putting it out of sight....I just should have set it up in the dining room or breakfast room or something.... I am sure you'll be deliriously happy with it and will have many wonder seed-starting adventures and I look forward to hearing all about them. I think you got a great deal considering it was Gardener's Supply. I never buy anything of theirs for full price. They have sales often enough (and especially in November when, I think, some of us gardeners are shopping for ourselves) that a person can be patient and get a good price during their periodic sales. I've noticed that prices often are not as good in December when gardeners' spouses or family members are doing what I call "panic Christmas buying" and cannot afford, time-wise, to wait for a sale. I don't think you were repetitive at all. The more we all share about what we do, how we do it and why we do it (as well as pointing out what didn't work for us!), the better for all of us to learn from one another's experiences! Carol, Our weather is just like yours. Our high was 70 degrees yesterday and it was so gorgeous outside I could hardly stand it. I wanted to jump up and down and scream "Spring Is Here!". That was exacerbated by the smell of the orange blossoms on my little orange tree. However, I controlled myself because I knew it was a false spring and that winter was returning today. It was 56 degrees around 7 a.m. here at our house and now it is 36 degrees and we have had very, very light rain but lots of thunder. Phooey on winter! I think you showed those folks at the co-op that one benefit of being a gardener is that it keeps your muscles and joints strong, healthy and fit. I'd rather "work out" in the garden any day, than walk on the treadmill or work out on the weight machine. Who wouldn't? Trees, Nope, sorry, I just haven't gotten to it. I am trying. Watch for it in a couple of hours or in the morning. I'm about to start typing mow after I close up the chicken coops, put out the deer corn for my favorite deer, refill the bird feeders (those little birdies are eating nonstop today trying to stay warm), etc. I'm kind of dreading going out into the cold wind but I need to do it now before it gets dark. I have to warn you that I don't use the same planting schemes every year because I don't want to get stuck in a rut, but I'll try to mention some of the planting schemes in my usual rotation. Dawn
...See More
Different Methods of Adding Organic Matter
Q
Comments (8)
My way is the same as Jay's and Diane's, except for new beds. I do use a rototiller in new beds. If all you ever do is apply mulch, compost, or even organic fertilizers, etc. as a 'side dressing' on the ground around your plants, those materials will be carried down into the soil over time. Rain carries some of the ingredients down into the ground, earthworms and other soil-dwelling critters do the rest. When you pull weeds, that action allows some of the upper mulch type materials to go down into the soil and the same thing happens when you use a trowel to plant things. If you never do anything but pile mulch up on the surface of the ground for the rest of your life, you'll still end up with great soil. I'll use our woodland as an example. We have very thick, dense red clay on all of our property. In a few cases, the clay is deeper down and there's a shallow layer of sand or silt on top of it. In most of the area, all we have is that red clay. In the woodland, though, we have about 8-10" of dark brownish-black, rich, humusy soil that is incredible. It has formed, of course, from the decomposition of leaves, wood, and even the bodies of insects and animals that die in the woods and decay there. No one (except, perhaps, the armadilloes or squirrels while digging) goes into the woods and rototills the organic matter into the clay subsoil every year, but over time the nutrients from that humusy soil work their way down into the clay too and even improve it. I do have a little Mantis cultivator that I sometimes like to use to work large amounts of organic matter into a vegetable bed that is being rennovated during the off season, but I know I shouldn't ever use it except when amending new soil. Rototilling or even heavy digging destroy the structure of the soil and neither one is especially good for it because they can lead to compaction. When earthworms and other soil dwellers, including all the various forms of microscopic life in the soil, tunnel through the soil, they leave little tunnel-like passageways that allow moisture, roots, and nutrients to move easily through the soil. These little passageways are an important part of soil structure, so the less we disturb our soil, the better it is. I used to think I had to rototill every bed before planting every year because that's what we did when I was growing up. It has taken me a long time to come to the realization that the less I disturb already-amended soil, the better for it. Nowadays, I try to focus on mulching, mulching, mulching. I bet I add at least 12" of mulch to each garden bed each year (over the course of the season, not all in one day)because I use a lot of ingredients like grass clippings from our lawn, old spoiled hay or straw, and chopped/shredded leaves and they break down and decompose very quickly, feeding the soil in the process. I'd be surprised if the cow manure burnt your bulbs' foliage, especially if you were using standard bagged cow manure that was not labeled "100% Cow Manure". Most bagged cow manure sold nowadays (except the Black Kow brand) is not 100% manure and is, instead, lots of filler, and the filler usually is very poor quality black clay. Most bagged cow manure has "up to 10% manure" so you probably couldn't burn plants with it if you tried. I've added large amounts of Black Kow 100% manure with no fillers to my garden beds and never have had it burn plants. If 100% cow manure won't burn plants, I don't think 10% would. Whatever happened to your plants, I don't think it was the fault of the manure. I've never added really fresh "local" manure to my beds because it has to be composted first in order to kill all the weed seeds and by the time it is composted there's nothing in it that would harm plants. However, because of all the issues with herbicide contamination, I don't use local manure any more because the ranchers here routinely use purchased hay to supplement their own pasture forage, and there's no telling what herbicides might have been sprayed on those purchased bales of hay when it was grown. If I used manure (any manure) and had issues develop after that, I'd be more likely to suspect herbicide contamination than to blame the manure itself. If your beds need nutrition now, I'd top dress the soil with a good organic fertilizer, and pile mulch on top of it so that rain (if it ever rains again) and irrigation water will carry the materials into the ground. If you don't mulch on top of the top-dressed fertilizers, they can be washed away by heavy rainfall or irrigation. You can, of course, use a hand trowel to work the organic matter deeper into the soil, but it is a lot of unnecessary work because the organic matter will get worked in over time. I just top dressed my onion beds this past week and will mulch them as soon as the wind stops blowing 25-40 mph which probably won't be until Tuesday. I wish I already had mulched them, but you have to work with the weather you have, and this windy weather is making it hard to get things done outside. If I tried to mulch yesterday, today, or even tomorrow, my mulch would end up blowing into another state. Dawn
...See More
anney
14 years ago
But keep in mind that the usefulness of companion plants is anecdotal in most cases, though at least companion planting has a natural effect. It breaks up blocks of what may be the same plants in a given area and makes it a little more difficult for pests to quickly get from one of their favorites to the next one. Particularly if the companion is one that the pest really doesn't like. While the effectiveness of companion planting may be questionable in some cases, it certainly is a benign garden practice if one wants to "do no harm" to the environment.

We really need more serious research in this area. The chemical companies have too firm a grip on the sensibilities of many growers, encouraging them to use poisons when we know that relationships between plant/disease and plant/insect worlds are practically alien territories. There are realms of undiscovered information about natural fungicides, pesticides, repellents, and even "friendly" relationships between plants.
Dan _Staley (5b Sunset 2B AHS 7)
14 years ago
IPM has a good handle on this, anney, and it was in my texts when I did my undergrad hort some years ago.

Dan
greenbean08_gw
14 years ago
I thought this link was helpful

Here is a link that might be useful: Companion planting
Kimmsr
14 years ago
anney, if you go to the link I provided you will find it is a part of the USDA and they have done and continue to research the use of plants to aid in preventing insect pest damage. There are people out there researching so the concept of Companion Planting is not just anecdotal.
anney
14 years ago
kimmsr

I never said that all companion planting principles are "just anecdotal", therefore worthless. I certainly don't garden that way myself. But some popular claims about companion plants are anecdotal and haven't been tested under controlled conditions -- some are wrong. The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff, which research is slowly doing. Maybe when things return to normal there will be more grants and money for more research. (Notice my optimism.)

Here is a link that might be useful: Questionable Companions
euphony
14 years ago
Companion planting is a great thing to investigate over the seasons on your own and experiment with. It really gets you thinking about all of the interactions going on under the soil such as root sizes/depth/growth pattern, allelopathies, root exudations, and insect/microorganism interactions and insect attraction and repellant affects above the soil. I put a link to a companion planting chart that includes quite a few plants.

Here is a link that might be useful: idep foundation
peter_6
14 years ago
novice: that link of kimmsr's (an excellent link by the way kimmsr) reminds us that there are different companions for different purposes. The moral is: decide what is your main priority (or aspiration, perhaps) and then pick your companion plant(s) accordingly. The same is absolutely true for cover crops. Regards, Peter.
farmersteve
14 years ago
Here's my limited experience with companion planting (good and indifferent):

The first year we were in our current house, we planted some tomato plants in late summer (we had moved in in early August). I spent the summer and fall picking the occasional (and sometimes small infestations of) horn worm(s) off the plants. Every year since, I have planted basil with and between the tomato plants (we want a lot of basil anyway, it might as well grow there) and I have seen one (count him, 1) horn worm in the last 5 years.

I was told and have read that similar strong smelling herbs (and sage in particular) can protect the cabbages from their looper. No effect (I still have not eaten my own cabbage (though this year is promising only due to an extra early start).

I have also always fought a minor battle with bean beetles on my pole beans. Last year I did two things. I switched varieties (to Kentucky wonder) and planted summer savory at the base of the bean plants. I think I saw 1 bean beetle all last year. Again, this was with two changes so I don't know which one had the greatest effect. But again, I like the savory so I will plant it again. It might as well go there as anywhere else.

I have tried a few other things with little or no success: Carrots may love tomatoes (I have the book and refer to it often), but the tomatoes shaded the carrots too much and it took for ever for them to mature down there. Shading lettuce with taller plants is supposed to keep them from bolting for a bit longer in the heat. It may, but it also keeps it from growing fast (which is what you want from your lettuce) and makes it a bit leggy, looking for sun. Planting rosemary in the garden bed was a mistake only because it got so big that it wanted to take over the bed (it has it's own place now that it shares with a few smaller herbs and we are both happy).

Steve
paulns
14 years ago
Some observations I've made over the years about companions:

-Basil does well with beets - not much bothered by pests.

-I always grow a row of flax alongside the potato patch, and had problems with potato beetles only one year in ten, and then just a few, easily controlled by hand-picking.

Golden Marguerite and fennel attract many and various beneficials.

Marigolds are invariably mentioned as a good companion but we quit planting them because a) their main effect is to repel soil nematodes, which are not a problem here and b) slugs eat them.

There's not necessarily some magical effect going on between plants listed as good companions - often they are simply 'plants that share space well'. Rodale put out a book called High-Yield Gardening (1986) that includes useful info on interplanting and companions for individual crops.
novice_2009
Original Author
14 years ago
thanks for all your help. Looking for those experiences, and thanks for sharing!!!!So, thanks farmer steve and paulns, for your help. A million books can be written, but, I like to hear of others experience with it, and try my own. I'm pretty good with tomatoes, know all about basil, parsley, and marigolds to help. Not sure about other crops. It's trial and error I guess. Putting radishes and nastridiums and radishes among cukes and bush baby waterelons to see if that helps. Let you know. Thanks!!! BTW, don't think it's all myth, as what do you think they did before pesticides and herbicides? It's time to find better ways!!!! Let me know what you've learned. LOve you all.
boothc9
14 years ago
I just wanted to chime in on this with my experience. This is my first year ever gardening so you can take this for what it is. In general, planting a large variety of vegetables in an area and particularly focusing on several aromatic herbs does a great job at preventing pests.

I have an 8x16 organic plot and have had very few to no problems at all with pests.
Kimmsr
14 years ago
People that plant large blocks of one plant find that insect pests can be real problems on that plant, but people that mix plants (companion plant of intercrop) see less of a problem. Two things help any organic grower lessen insect pests and plant disease problems, making the soil plants grow in into a good, healthy soil and that intercropping or companion planting.

companion plants as part of organic methods?

Comments (14)

Dan _Staley (5b Sunset 2B AHS 7)

Kimmsr

Related Discussions

anney

Dan _Staley (5b Sunset 2B AHS 7)

greenbean08_gw

Kimmsr

anney

euphony

peter_6

farmersteve

paulns

novice_2009
Original Author

boothc9

Kimmsr

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

companion plants as part of organic methods?

Comments (14)

Related Discussions

novice_2009Original Author

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

novice_2009
Original Author