I have planted marigolds, basil, rosemary, lemon balm, chives and red salvia in the hugel with my tomatoes. Can't hurt, can it? The Ask.com site I went to was very informative about companion planting. I bought several petunia plants to plant in with my squash and pumpkin plants. They are supposed to deter squash vine borers. Stink bugs are supposed to be deterred by catnip, radishes, mints, marigolds and garlic. I will try anything natural. I will not use chemicals ever again. I had to spray them every week in a back pack sprayer at one nursery I worked at. I'm sure my COPD has been caused by mostly that.

emmie9999, try corn if you want to and have some extra room (particularly if you expand your beds). I live in the country in PA, with lots of corn around. There's a farmstand a half-mile up the road that always has great corn, but I still grow some of my own, just becauase it feels good to look out and see a little patch of corn in my garden. (But I've got a pretty big garden, so I'm not so worried about the space.) This year I'm increasing the fun factor by experimenting with a couple of open-pollinated heirloom varieties along with a regular supersweet hybrid type. You can plant a small patch of corn, but then it helps to hand-pollinate it to get good ears. When the silks show up, cut off some bits of the tassles from the top and dust it over the silks. CAVEAT: I haven't tried that yet, but I read somewhere here that it works well. I'm going to try it this year. Last year I had one very small patch of late summer corn that didn't pollinate well -- I didn't know about hand-pollinating then. A lot of my gardening is just aimed at getting fresh veggies, but a lot of it is also just for fun. I grow some dried beans, for instance. From the perspective of food, it doesn't make any sense, since you can buy a pound of dried beans in the market for about 80 cents. But I grow old heirloom varieties, like Steuben and Amish Knuttle, which you can't get in the market. I don't have room to plant enough to get more than about 1-2 pounds of dried beans per variety, but the beans are pretty and it's just fun. With green beans, you might consider pole beans. You get a much larger harvest from a small amount of garden space. You also can harvest a lot of it standing up. And the teepees look lovely -- I make mine out of 7- or 8-foot lengths of bamboo. One of the downsides is that you can't use row covers (at least not easily), if you're planning on using covers. You also have to make sure the teepees don't shade something else in the garden. One last downside to teepees is that occasionally a good wind will make them start leaning, especially in the early summer before the beans are strong enough to anchor them. Have fun and good luck with your garden.

For the organic home gardener, companion planting is one solution if you're concerned about soil fertility. The classic companions are pole beans with your corn. The corn provides poles for the beans to climb and the beans fix nitrogen in the soil that the corn requires in large quantity. The other is the tomatoes and garlic combination. Garlic provides insect repellent to several pests that love tomatoes. I'm not sure what tomatoes do for garlic, but garlic doesn't have too many pests anyway. And the other solution is to amend with your organic, home-made compost every year, and you'll have no worries. The compost encourages earthworms, and the earthworms improve the soil even more with their castings. It's all just good stewardship. But if you still felt like rotating crops, there's nothing wrong with planting tomatoes in the bed where you had your corn last year and vice versa. Where you plant your cole crops, you may want to use floating row covers to protect agains roving pests, cover crops in alternating years and rotation as well. Cheryl

Hi all,I just love this forum. I've only been gardening for maybe the past decade in the place i'm at,but i've found that with tomatoes it is best to rotate.In my old garden(which was 20' by 20'),I would just move the mater patch to the next quadrant of the garden.I grew tomatoes, peppers, cukes, broccoli,cauliflower and lettuce. This year I've gone to a raised bed with amended soil, and its working out just fine. Each year in the old garden I would amend heavily with compost. My compost was made of leaves,grass clippings,sawdust,newspaper(shredded),coffee grounds,straw,just about any fruit rind garbage,a bit of topsoil, and very little cow manure.This yrs compost will go into the garden next spring,(08).It has worked very well, although I never seem to make enough of it.I personally think that the only real element that needs close watch when re-planting is nitrogen.Tomatoes draw a lot of it for growth. You said your plants are on 6 ft squares,so you may be safer that most of us because of spacing. By the way: I used to hail from Montgomery co. in Pa.the ONLY time I miss all that heat & humudity is when I look at my tomatoes.