FLOWERS and vegetables have long been great companion plants and your gardens can look amazing all-year round by utilising both.
I HAD the pleasure of visiting a working 19th Century farm recently where one of the highlights was a vegetable garden which had the full complement of companion flowers.
This gave the whole thing an inviting riot of colour and depth that was a delight to see.
And it’s understandable – back then, gardeners depended on what was in their gardens and didn’t have the wherewithal we have today, when it comes to pest sprays and dusts and the multitude of fertilisers we depend on.
So over time, they learned what plants worked well together, whether encouraging growth of another, or repelling insect pests and diseases for both themselves and plants grown around them.
There are some plants which flower that should always be in your gardens – and particularly, your veggie gardens.
Marigolds are one such plant.
Also known as calendula, its bright orange and yellow flowers attract many beneficial insects from ladybirds and hoverflies (these love aphids) to bees and butterflies, while at the same time, repelling insects like spider mites and others.
In the same breath, these hardy plants are known to improve the growth rates of silverbeet, radish, carrot, thyme and parsley in particular.
Nasturtiums, while they can overtake a garden if not trimmed back occasionally given their wandering nature, are great edible plants with their slight peppery flavour, but their best feature is they are great companions for tomatoes, cucumbers, kale, kohlrabi, collards, broccoli, cabbage and radishes.
The reason for this is they deter such insects as whitefly, the dreaded cabbage loopy caterpillar, a number of different beetles and quite a few more, while like the marigold, also attract hoverflies which love aphids.
Hyssop is a great herb for planting to keep white butterflies away, as they are bad at this time of year.
When looking at what plants should go with which at this time of year in your garden, to get the best from each, the ‘friend zoning’ should look like this:
Beetroot grows well with broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and onion.
To get the best from broccoli, you can also plant celery dill, radish and runner beans.
Carrots and leeks love one another and the former will also do well planted with lettuce, onions and peas.
Next month, which is commercial planting time for strawberry farms, think about planting them with leeks.
