What Vegetables and Flowers Grow Well Together

What Vegetables and Flowers Grow Well Together?

Through the many decades that humans have been cultivating gardens, people have observed which veggies grow well together and which plants tend to hinder each other’s growth. 

Some fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers enhance the soil while others keep pests away from one another. A unique blueprint for better garden production is provided by companion planting. If you don’t know what companion planting is, I suggest you follow Stephanie from Backyard Gardeners Network, she did a great job on explain everything you need to know about companion planting in your garden.

While you’re creating your companion garden, think about making it more welcoming to some other companions like butterflies and birds by planting. Do not forget to make the area convenient for other family members like kids. 

Zinnias and Cucumbers

Zinnias are a wonderful addition to a vegetable garden and have several advantages for your cucumber plants. They not only have stunning beauty, but they also have a big impact on the insects that come to your garden.

It has been discovered that zinnias draw hoverflies, a predatory insect that feeds on aphids, a common foe of cucumbers. Zinnias can be planted close to squash and pumpkins to draw aphid predators like hoverflies, reducing damage to your crops. Aphids also target these veggies.

Carrots and Leeks

The vegetable patch can benefit greatly from crops with strong scents. Root vegetables like parsnips and carrots are frequently combined with alliums like leeks, onions, and garlic. 

This mixture appears to be especially beneficial – the scent of leeks may keep carrot flies away from leeks while the tiny leeks can keep leek moths away from leeks.

Marigolds and Tomatoes 

Many types of insects are repelled by marigolds. To prevent the unsightly green hornworms, grow marigolds around tomatoes. These large insects may destroy a tomato plant in a single night. To add vivid color and deter insect predators, plant marigolds all around your vegetable garden.

Nasturtiums and Potatoes

If you grow potatoes, you undoubtedly loathe the awful potato bugs that go along with them. Nasturtiums work effectively in keeping potato bugs away from your garden because they are a potato bug’s least favorite flower.

The bright, lovely nasturtium is edible on top of being a useful potato bug deterrent. According to reports, the blooms and leaves can be added to salads and have a moderate peppery, spicy flavor.

Sweet Alyssum and Peppers

Peppers do well when planted beneath the low-growing, sweet-smelling, and lovely flowering plant known as sweet alyssum. Throughout the growing season, these mat-forming, mulch flowers will blossom and benefit peppers in amazing ways.

Though peppers love the sun, their roots love to stay cold, which can be accomplished by growing Sweet Alyssum below and sheltering the soil. The Sweet Alyssum also acts as a living mulch thus preventing weed growth.

Wormwood and Beans

Strongly perfumed wormwood, also known as Artemisia absinthium, can keep aphids like blackflies away from crops of broad beans and other beans. In addition, its yellow blossoms draw ladybirds, hoverflies, and lacewings, all of which feed on aphids.

Borage and Strawberries

Borage is a lovely shrub with hairy leaves that taste faintly of cucumber. Borage is thought to enhance the flavor of strawberries when grown close by. Borage blossoms also draw pollinators including bees, butterflies, and hoverflies that help pollinate crops.

Petunias and Beans

Try growing petunias if you’re struggling with Mexican bean bugs in your garden. Both beans and peas can benefit from petunias since they can help prevent Mexican bean bug damage. 

Additionally, they are incredibly brilliant and vivid, which will enhance the beauty of your garden and attract pollinators. Particularly hummingbirds and butterflies adore petunias and will gladly visit your vegetable garden if it also has petunias.

Melons and Flowering Herbs

Planting flowering herbs like dill, fennel, and parsley alongside melons or even squash will entice insect visitors into your garden because all of these foods need pollinators to grow. You won’t get any harvest if there is no pollination for the pumpkins.

Calendula and Brocolli

Calendula flowers emit a sticky material from their stems that draws aphids and traps them inside. It has been discovered that putting it next to her brassica crops, particularly broccoli, keeps the pests away. Additionally, it attracts helpful ladybugs that eat the aphids.

Radishes and Carrot

These two plants do not compete for resources since they draw their nutrients from various locations in the soil. When compared to carrots, which have a lengthy tap root and take longer to mature, radishes mature more swiftly and grow less deeply.

Sweet Alyssum and Swiss Chard

Annual alyssum is simple to raise from seed in the spaces between rows of vegetables. Hoverflies, which are helpful insects that control aphids, are attracted to them in large numbers. Plant these delicate low-growing flowers in between lovely Swiss chard as a border.

Chamomile and Cabbage

Brassicas like cabbage benefit from the helpful insects that chamomile attracts. Leave the roots intact so they can continue to rot and improve the soil when you break it up and scatter it on the bed in the fall.

Perhaps there isn’t always a lot of scientific support for some of these combinations, but give it a shot and see what sticks. After all, in the garden, experimenting is half the pleasure!

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