As the warm weather approaches, gardeners across the country are starting to plan their flower beds and vegetable patches in anticipation of the garden-planting season. Whether you’re a seasoned gardener, or if this is the first year you’ve decided to get outside and get your hands dirty, you’ll want to make sure that you’re doing everything you can to ensure your garden’s success.
Many gardeners will use the principles of companion planting to make sure they’re putting plants together that will help each other to thrive. It is equally as important, however, that you consider which plants should not be planted together, or else your garden could fail.
What Is Companion Planting?
Companion planting is a certain practice of gardening when crops that are natural allies are grown side-by-side. A traditional practice by dedicated gardeners, companion planting has been observed for many years. The native Americans often planted squash, beans, and corn together, which is a good example of companion planting. While the corn works as a support to the beans, the beans return the nutrients to the soil. The squash has broad leaves that droop down as weeds and lock the moisture in the soil. This is why these three crops flourish well together.
However, certain pairs of plants are very unfriendly towards each other, and this leads one plant to harm the other. Learn about the plants you must never consider growing together.
Cucumber & Basil
Though cucumber and basil might sound like the beginnings of a refreshing drink, seasoned gardeners find that the vegetable does not grow well near aromatic herbs like basil, rosemary, sage, and marjoram. Herbs with strong scents and flavors tend to have an impact on the taste of the growing cucumber. One herb it does like, though: Dill, which attracts beneficial insects like hoverflies and predatory wasps.
Beans & Garlic
In general, leguminous plants—beans, peas, and other legumes—are a finicky bunch, and they aren’t any easier when it comes to finding a plant buddy in the vegetable garden. They don’t like plants in the onion family, including garlic, chives, and leeks, or in the cabbage family, either, like broccoli, cauliflower, and kale.
Tomatoes & Corn
This may be a classic summertime combo on your plate, but don’t plant tomatoes and corn near each other in the garden. These heavy feeders compete with each other for the same nutrients, so they could both end up deprived if the soil isn’t super-rich. They also share a common pest, the tomato fruit worm, which can easily spread between the plants, killing them both.
Sunflowers & Potatoes
Sunflowers have allelopathic properties—biological traits that influence or affect nearby plants—that farmers have long used to their advantage, planting them along the edges of crops to prevent weeds from growing and spreading between crops. But their dropped seeds release toxins that inhibit the growth of potatoes and pole beans, so take care to plant them at least a foot away from your vegetable garden.
Black Walnuts & Everybody
Black walnut trees are notorious among gardeners for killing just about every plant around them. This is because their nuts, hulls, roots, leaves, and stems contain a chemical called juglone that appears to be lethal to plants. If you have one of these trees on your property, talk to your local gardening expert about what plants might be able to survive near them, but don’t attempt to plant an entire garden in its vicinity.