Jennifer Scarffe - Companion Planting--The Lazy Gardeners Guide to Organic Vegetable Gardening

Companion Planting

The Lazy Gardener's Guide to

Organic Vegetable Gardening

By Jennifer Scarffe

The Lazy Gardener Series Volume 1

What is Companion Planting?

What is companion planting?

C OMPANION PLANTING is the notion that every plant has a best friend it likes to grow with. You plant some tomatoes, grow some basil around the edges of the bed, and presto! both basil and tomato grow like wildfire.

Sounds like magic. And it is, but it doesn't really work like that.

Companion planting is an idea that grew out Europe after hundreds of years of experimental planting and seeing which plants thrive in each other's company. Most of the traditional companion planting pairings work best in Europe, where soil conditions, climate and many other factors were all taken into account when the original plant associations were made.

But things that work brilliantly in English gardens don't work the same all over the world.

The classic example is the marigolds-repel-nematodes advice. The roots of marigold flowers release a chemical that nematodes don't like and so the nematodes move elsewhere and leave your plants alone. This little gem was discovered to be extremely successful in England and so became one of the most well-known companion planting traditions. But it is only moderately helpful in North America where there is a greater variety of nematode species present in the soil. In Australia and New Zealand, it doesn't work at all as the nematodes in those countries are a different species entirely. Even in North America, the marigold trick isn't a total nematode cure because the marigolds simply chase the nematodes away from the marigolds - and towards the roots of the plants you're trying to nurture.

Companion planting represents some ancient wisdom that has served gardeners well in the past and in certain environments. Outside of those environments companion planting is much less of the miracle gardening solution it is often touted to be.

So does it work, or doesn't it?

Y ES, IT CAN WORK. BUT it's not as simple as Googling a few companion planting charts and seeing what to plant next to your carrots.

A garden - any garden - is a complex system. Soil type, climate, the amount of sun, shade and water that might be available, the amount of bugs in the ground and in the air, the amount of birds in the area, the amount of small children in the area who continually pick and eat your snowpeas before you can get them to the kitchen table - all these factors influence the success of your garden.

In order to get the most from your garden, you need to help it thrive as a system. A system of plants, bugs, soil and water. Let nature do what nature does best and the results from your garden really will seem like magic.

In this way, companion planting is more about understanding a system, rather than remembering planting pairs. Once you begin to understand the system, then you can see how some of the traditional companion planting advice might work in your garden, or might be utterly inappropriate. You can also begin to develop your own companion planting 'rules'. Experiment and keep notes.

Filling in a garden diary is a very relaxing way to end a good healthy day of gardening. Make sure you enjoy a nice cup of tea while you make your notes. Looking back through your garden diary over past years becomes a lot like looking through old photo albums - you'll go all misty eyed as you say, "oh, remember the beets we grew that yeardivine!" You'll be surprised how much you don't remember from year to year. Best write it down.

Over time, you'll begin to learn what works best in your garden. You'll understand how tomatoes, chillies and aubergines really like the hot, sunny patches in your garden. How other herbs and vegies can survive part shade and more moisture. You'll make amazing discoverieslike pumpkins really do climb peach trees! And you'll learn to be more relaxed about bugs, content to let the wrens and finches finish off the aphids on your roses rather than reaching for the poisons.

Rather than thinking of companion planting as a series of rules you need to learn, think instead that companion planting is an opportunity to learn more about your garden, about nature and about the interconnectedness of life.

Pests, Weeds and Fertility

A S A SET OF RULES, companion planting attempts to conquer the three big traditional gardening problems:

- Pests

- Weeds

- Fertility

If you Google any list of companion planting rules and examine the pairings you'll see that they're all about addressing one or more of these issues. The roses and garlic rule is about the smell of the garlic being unpleasant to aphids on the roses. Growing sunflowers around the edge of your garden is about keeping the weeds down. Planting beans around carrots is about fixing nitrogen into the soil.

A healthy, balanced garden manages all of these problems by itself. But a thriving, abundant garden rarely looks like the picture perfect gardens you see in magazines or on TV. A healthy garden is messy.

Mother Nature never plants in rows and so neither should we. A nice, neat row of cabbages is smorgasbord for hungry cabbage moths! And while we're talking about pests, there was no bug-spray in the garden of Eden. Every bug has its predator. There are good bugs and bad bugs - and birds, who eat their share of bugs too. Welcome predators into your garden and your bug problems become far more manageable. Humanity has thrived for thousands of years without ducking out to the hardware store for chemical fertilizers in plastic containers. Your garden is full of nutrients - which can certainly be enhanced in organic, natural ways.