Companion Planting

A few weeks ago I wrote this post about building our raised bed gardens. Since then the majority of the garden has gone hog wild and it has been so much fun to watch those plants grow! I had heard about companion planting before, but had never tried to implement it. Well, this spring I had ordered a couple books on companion planting, but this book is by far my favorite. Sally Jean Cunningham has done an excellent job of writing a fun, informative and inspiring book called Great Garden Companions. I devoured it and tried to incorporate most of her ideas. There are going to be some changes next year, but overall I'm thrilled with how my garden is growing. Hopefully we will have trellises inbetween the boxes for viney crops and flowers to grow on next year to utilize space better and give it an added flare of fun. And, I'm going to try starting my flowers for the boxes from seed to save some money, for a homeschool educational project and just for fun.

My pictures do not really show it well, but it may give you a bit of an idea of how things are going. Even though my boxes are 4' x 48', it is divided into 4' x 8' sections. This section has broccoli, cauliflower, asters and marigolds. We just picked our first head of broccoli for supper last night and I'm going to have to get much of it cut and in the freezer tomorrow.

This one is quite hard to see, but there are peas growing up a wire trellis on the north side of the section, then a watermelon plant that is taking over with onions, asters, zinnias, marigolds and my daughter's geranium. Oh, and there were radishes interspersed too. You can see the soaker hose coming out the end of the box. That has saved me MUCH time in watering!
Here are my tomatoes with basil peaking up between the plants. In the past we have used cattle panels for trellising up the tomatoes, but it just didn't happen this year. They are sturdy, and work wonderfully. You just stack the panels 3 high with about 1' inbetween layers and use 2x4's or something for a frame. They are a bit hard to explain, but really quite simple. I'll have a picture next year! You can see white PVC piping at the base of the plants. I't 6' pipe that is cut in 6'-8' lengths. I use those around the new scrawny plants when I first put them in the ground. That way they are protected from the wind. I haven't figured out how to start tomato plants from seed without them being scrawny and leggy, but they seem to take off just fine once they are in the ground and they've always produced for me. I hear that some people have problems with cutworm, but I've never had that problem when using these around the base of the plants.
And here is the "3 sisters". It's kind of silly to plant corn in raised bed gardens. I'm going to have to stand on a ladder to reach the corn, but I just HAD to try it! You plant corn seeds in a 2' circle. When they come up a bit, plant pole beans just outside the corn. Then plant squash inbetween. The pole beans are growing up the corn and the squash is a ground cover for weeds. It works beautifully, but the squash really needs more room than a 4' x 8' section. It's going over the sides and into my potatoes and broccoli. Oh well. Next year those trellises between the boxes will really help.
So there you have a brief overview of some companion planting techniques. I hope it's helpful for anyone that may be considering such a venture. It is tons of fun, but you have to get over the fact that it's not a traditional way of gardening. It's cheerful to have all the flowers in amongst the vegetables and there's good reason for having them, but for those that have never seen such a technique, it may take some getting used to.

Happy gardening!