Companion Planting: The Real Benefits

 

Companion planting of Brassicas and onions

With the holiday season over and winter settled in, perhaps planning your garden will warm up some of those dreary winter days.  There are lots of things to consider when planning out the vegetable garden. If you haven't yet considered companion planting make this the year you do.

  Companion planting is the practice of interplanting or intercropping two or more plants to achieve some benefit. While info on beneficial companion plants has been passed around among gardeners for generations not all the info is based on verifiable results a lot is folklore.  There is, however, a renewed interest in research on companion planting. New trendier terms may be used in place of companion planting such as polycultures, intercropping, and interplanting, but the beneficial results are the same. New studies are focusing on how companion planting is a way to create a ecosystems of organisms and food webs that are mutually beneficial to each other.  While that may sound complicated it's not.

Intercropping of sweet corn and pumpkins and winter squash.

Lets clarify some terms before diving into the benefits of companion planting.

In studies and research you probably won't hear the term companion planting but you will find others terms referring to the same concept.

Polyculture:  a system where multiple plants are are planted to mimic the biodiversity of nature.  This creates less disease and pest pressure than a mono culture.

Intercropping:  Planting multiple crops in the same field to yield some benefit.

Interplanting:  a smaller scale version of intercropping and mixing multiple plants in the same space.

Monoculture:  for clarification a monoculture would be one field, raised bed, or row of the same crop.

All terms mean the same thing:  increasing the diversity of plants to achieve a benefit.  I personally seem to use the term interplanting or companion planting because it seems a better fit for the home gardener.

Companion planting of brassicas, onions, and celery.

Benefit 1:  Pest Management

Pest management is probably the most well know benefit.  How does it work?  Pests find  and recognize their target plant using the volatile chemicals emitted by the plant. The correct companion plant can mask or hide these chemicals. Avoiding a monoculture makes it more difficult for a pest to find its host plant.  While not completely eliminating a pest it does reduce pest loads.

When this is your purpose remember not all claims on the internet are backed by research.  Here are a few that are researched and are companion plantings I utilize in my garden.

Peppers & Onions  

• Deter green peach aphids  
• Onions mask volatile chemicals from peppers from aphids

Zucchini & Nasturtiums

• Deter squash bugs 
• Reduced numbers by masking volatile chemicals

Cole Crops & Dill

• Deter imported cabbage worm
• Reduces egg laying by adult cabbage worms which are butterflies

Onions, cabbage & marigolds

• Onion and cabbage root maggots
• Marigolds mask volitive chemicals making it hard for the adult flies to find their host plant.

Benefit 2:  Encourages Beneficial Insects in your Garden

Biological control is when one living organism is used to control the population of another.  Beneficial insects provide pest control in two ways: predators directly eat their pests while parasitoids lay eggs inside a pest and the developing young consume the pest from the inside out.  It's like something out of a horror movie, right?  

Beneficial insects need 3 things to thrive in your garden:

1. A pesticide free environment

2.  Carbohydrate rich nectar which is the food of the adult insect

3.  Prey insects for the larvae of the beneficial insect.

Companion plants invite beneficial insects into your garden and encourage them to stay. 

Sweet Alyssum & Lettuce

• The nectar is attractive to the syrphid flies and parasitic wasps whose larvae feed on aphids

Flowering Herbs in Carrot Family such as carrots, dill, fennel

• Attractive to parasitic wasps which lay their eggs on caterpillars
• Lacewings lay their eggs on the dill in my garden and larvae devour aphids

Flowers in the daisy family and Cole crops

• The daisy family attracts ladybugs, lacewings, and parasitic wasps.

The world of beneficial insects is fascinated and I will soon be doing a separate post on these creatures.  For now just plan on creating and implementing practices that will help them thrive in your garden.

Additional Benefits

There are additional benefits and reasons to intercrop or companion plant including weed suppression and building soil.  Also it looks beautiful to mix your plantings with herbs and flowers.  I focused on groupings that I have tried and that I know have worked. I wouldn't devote too much energy to overthinking this just keep in mind the goal is to create more diversity within each garden bed which benefits plants and the soil biology.

 

Dill which attracts beneficial insects.

Survival Gardening

Preparedness is a popular past time and serious concern for a large number of people. With the COVID-19 pandemic, world events, and recent economic concerns, there has been a renewed interest in getting back to basics.  While food storage, water, emergency preparedness, and fuel are usually the focus.  Have you thought about producing your own food? Or at least some of your own food?

This soup is all home grown produce.

 Historically food has been relatively inexpensive and extremely convenient.  Making gardening more a hobby than a necessity.

If a crop failed, we always had the grocery store to fall back on.  Want to eat something not in season? No problem, the grocery store can provide you with that option also.

Create a personal pantry of homegrown produce and herbs.

The reality is  the general public lacks basic gardening skills and gardening wisdom. Today's gardeners are more often influenced by media and marketing than sound gardening principles. 

We are a pampered people. Lacking the most basic of survival skills:  the ability to produce food.

Even veteran gardeners have something to think about.

The vegetable cultivators we do plant lack the survival skills that wild plants have. And hybrids do not produce seed true to type.  When we do garden we plant pampered plants.

Pampered People + Pampered Plants = Trouble in Hard Times

Super Typhoon Haiyan category 5 that hit the Philippeans

Trouble? What trouble?  Whether global, national, local, or just simple hard times individually how prepared are you to grow your own food if the situation arises?

Gardening skills are personal insurance for hard times with so many benefits. 

Benefits of Growing Your Own Food

• Eliminates the uncertainty of what pesticides etc have been used on your produce
• Growing your own food puts you on the road to self reliance
• Once the garden structure is in place it is cheaper to grow your own produce than to purchase it
• Not effected by crop shortages due to harsh weather
• Security against recessions, depressions, war, pandemics, and inflation
• Not affected by commercial contamination or recalls
• Security during a personal financial crisis

The majority of the nation does not have the skills or land to produce their own food.  A nation that cannot feed itself in time of peace and prosperity is going to be desperate in hard, difficult times.

  During bad times it is the producer that will be a valuable asset.  If you are a self-reliant grower you will be at peace, confident, hopeful, and in a position to help others.  

Without the skills to grow food during hard times or disaster situations you will be desperate and stressed.  

Essentially when your neighbors and community are self reliant and living providently your family benefits.  If the majority of you neighbors are dependent and helpless, it will be a liability to you.

This is why I enjoy helping and encouraging others to garden.  To be self reliant, I believe there are two important aspects concerning food.  Families need to have a well stocked pantry or food storage; and second they need to be able to garden and then preserve the harvest for later use.

Where to Start?

1.  Prepare and practice skills in good times.
Becoming a skilled gardener will change your life for the better whether or not you actually have to survive on it.

2.  Understand the Principles of Organic Gardening

Organic gardening would be the only option in a survival situation.  You need to understand and implement these principles now so you are prepared and confident in your ability to feed your family.

Implementing Organic Principles

 Garden Practices that Will Doom You to Failure

• Most gardeners procrastinate planting times.  In a survival situation it is critical to plant as soon as the soil is warm enough.  Delaying, postpones the harvest and in some situations encourages pests. 

• No protection for your crops.  Whether it is a greenhouse, low tunnel, hoop tunnel, or row covers you need to consider how to protect crops from unexpected frosts and freezes. 

• Not knowing how to start seeds and grow your own seedlings for transplant.  Some veggies do better as transplant such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.  In a survival situation you have to provide the transplants.  They must be started 6-8 weeks before you plan on transplanting them to the garden.  Learn now to grow your own seedlings.  Some plants prefer to be seeded directly in the garden such as root crops, melons, cucumbers, and squash.

3.  Not Knowing How to Save Seeds 
Learn to save seeds.  Seeds in a survival garden should be open pollinated.  Heirlooms are a type of open pollinated seed that has a history and heritage.  Before growing your food is a necessity, you need to know which open pollinated and heirloom varieties will do well in your area.  This is why just purchasing a can of seeds or seed vault may doom you to disaster.  These seed vaults usually have heirloom varieties.  Since heirlooms usually are from a certain region they may not do well in your area.  Figure out what you can and can't grow before a crisis.  Seeds have to be harvested when they are viable and that varies with each vegetable.

4.  Not building your soil.
Work now to build your soil.  The most important aspect will be returning organic matter into the soil.  Start composting now so you are prepared to and able to maintain a fertile soil. Also learn to cover crop with green manures or cover crops in order to build you soil.

Buckwheat a fast growing cover crop used as a green manure.

Best crops for a Survival Situation

Perhaps the determining factor on what you can and can't grow will be the amount of water available for gardening.  Certain crops are ideal to grow in a survival situation because they are calorie dense, high in protein, and are good long term storage crops.

There are hunger gaps that happen between harvest seasons  so that is the reason you would focus on calorie-dense storage crops. 

 

Water Issues

Consider setting up a rain water harvesting system now.  A 1000 square foot roof will yield 520 gallons of water from a 1 " rain storm.  Most rain harvesting systems are gravity fed or need a pump system to convey the water to the garden.  Also consider how to direct overflow during a storm so it does not go to waste.  Perhaps a melon or squash that needs lot of water could be planted near the rain barrels so overflow provides them with water.  Have hoses available to direct overflow to areas you want it.

Wood barrels expand and seal as they fill up.

You have seen the effects of rainwater on your garden especially if you live in an arid area like I do.  Rain water is so beneficial for your plants and for a healthy soil.  Rainwater is highly oxygenated, free of salts, inorganic ions, and fluoride.  It helps dilute the effects of undesirable compounds in tap water and results in more drought tolerant, healthy plants.

 

These old pickle barrels come with the spigot.

My husband added the filters to the lids.

Other Considerations

• Consider growing grains
• Add livestock to your homestead.  Chickens, ducks, dairy goats, pigs.....
• Be sure to store basic food supplies such as oil, sugar, flour, beans, rice, focus on foods your family will eat that you can survive on
• Store herbs to season meals
• Rotate your food storage
• Have good garden tools
• Store some organic pesticides and fertilizers
• Learn to preserve your own food.
•  Get to know like minded people