Anyone practice companion planting or guild gardening?

It is time for my favorite winter past time. I am planning the garden. I have paper and pencil and eraser (important) and dreams. I have been reading articles on companion planting for decades and always plan on incorporating it more. Honestly, most of the time, the closest I get to doing it is planting flowers with the veggies to encourage bees to come and pollinate.
My one and only resolution this year is to make a real effort to incorporate companion planting. Maybe what I am envisioning is more toward guild gardening but I see very little difference between the two methods.
I would love to hear what you have tried and the results you have gotten. I would also love to have some comrades in this venture. We could share ideas and compare notes and end results over the season.
Here is where you all leave a little feedback. I am all ears.

Rosalind Creasey 's books -- such as the Edible Flower Garden -- have quite a few suggestions for edible companions.

Have you used any of the suggestions? How do they work for you?

I've never used it. Yet. Would like to be able to incorporate a little just as part of a management scheme for my problem veggies. Potatoes and squash. I'm running out of new places to rotate to and thinking that maybe incorporating CP into the overall plan will at least lessen the impact of some of 'them enterprising bugs.' My squash has been eaten every year by squash bugs. Never planted in the same location. I'm hoping to put 'em in strawbales this year to minimize possibility for trouble. But if there were a good companion to plant next to them....heck anything at this point. I spent half my summer picking off and squushing individual eggs, checking under every leaf until they started laying on the stems.

Right now how I lay out my garden is anyone's guess --just trying to keep from putting the same stuff in the same spot year in and year out... Kathy --have you done any reading on it yet or...?

2008 was the first year I tried companion planting. What I really need to do is dig up my companion planting map I created and share that but I did get an opportunity to plant some of our vegetables.

I experienced problems other than insects, soil and "normal" issues that one would find in gardening this year, the electric co-op decided to replace all of the poles on the east end of my property and guess where my garden resides? yeah anyway.....

I planted carrots and beets together. My raised beds are about 3 feet wide at the base, about 2 1/2 feet at the top and about 35 feet long. I planted a row of beets on the north side of the row, then a row of carrots up the middle and finally a second row of beets on the south side of the row.

I have never had such healthy beets and carrots. Now, toward the end of the season there was something (never seen it) that was eating the tops off my carrots. I wish I would have taken a picture of the beets and carrots together before the vermin or insect killed my carrot tops. It was really a great yield and they were as healthy as I have ever seen them.

I went foraging in the basement 'Library' trying to find my hand-me-down CP book. No luck. The beets and carrots thing would be great if I used beets --it's not a skill I ever learned, sadly.Wouldn't know what to do with them. A different book suggested peas and carrots which would be great as my peas did nothing last year and the carrots were mediocre at best. I'm thinking there was a list of possible companions on a really old thread here that would be great to look at...

Do you remember any particular successes other than those? Did you get the info from books? AND how fun would it be to have a CP Garden map available that we could all pilfer ideas from one another off of?!

Cool Page that has some startup ideas.
http://www.companionplanting.net/ListofCompanionPlants.html

2008 was my first year with intentional CP so I don't have any real practical experience.

I got all my info from reading a great deal of internet and magazine articles and from 2 different books "Carrots Love Tomatoes" and "The Gardener's A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food".

Then built a plan based on what I felt would be a good CP garden. One other thing to note that I didn't mention before is that while building my plan I tried to make sure that the next plant down the row was compatible with the whatever I was leaving off with; so before the Carrots and Beets I had Potato plants. They did well also. That is to say the Potato plants that were next to the Beets and Carrots didn't suffer any ill effects nor did the Beets and Carrots.

Because the electric co-op decided to destroy the bottom half of my garden all I was able to plant in 2008 was Tomato, radish, carrot, beets and potato.

I didn't get to plant the corn, chard, beans, peas cucumbers.... well there are a few others but you get the idea. I did have a plan for the entire garden that covered every plant but didn't get the chance to see it through because of our relatively short growing season here in Zone 4a. I was very upset about this and they heard about it. They also decided to help restore that end of the garden.

This winter I will review that plan again and then hopefully see it through completely this spring.

How horribly frustrating is that!! At least they consented to do SOMEthing! We had to create our plots by hand turning sod -with a shovel. Started out small for obvious reasons. Knocked off excess dirt and moved the sod to bare locations, which we had plenty of. Just got up close to the amount of planting space I would like. For now. It takes a LOT to get from dirt to soil...

Your plan sounds very similar to what I am trying to do. Unless I'm mistaken... I'd like to create a CP rotation roster, SoTSpk, that will allow me to rotate consistently and continually. That would give me a lot more gardening space --mentally anyway, lol. As it stands now I can hardly keep track:-(

Yes, I understand the physical work that one must perform. Our clay soil was terribly hard. It took a lot of back breaking hours and time for composting to get from "dirt to soil". ( I like the way you said that )

The rotation may throw a loop in the plan. I remember thinking that I would just wait until next winter (which is now) to figure out a rotation because the other considerations are watering and how much sun or shade is required. Not easy. well it might be easy but it sure is a lot of researching.

Hi all~ last year I grew cucumbers and nasturtiums together in containers. With the trellised cucumbers, the nasturtiums' orange blossoms made a lovely combo. I can't remember the online site that made the recommendation, but It was the first year that none of the cucumbers succumbed to borers.

This message was edited Jan 27, 2009 8:43 AM

An interesting development on Carrots and Beets. I was looking for my old garden plans and since I sometimes scribble notes in my books I decided to look through some of my books and what was interesting is I couldn't find why I planted the beets and carrots together!
The books I mentioned before don't say they are companions but also don't say they cannot be planted as companions.

There were several factors that I was considering. Amount of water, PH, lighting, yearly rotation and companions.

My notes are generally very thorough and stored on my computer even if they are at first hand written.

Hopefully when that darn map turns up I will have written some notes on it.

The good news is it seemed to work...

Here are a couple of interesting links:

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/897993/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants

Well, I can't seem to find the finish map that I created last year, but I did find one of the rough drafts.

First I needed to solve the problem of loosing that map or any successive maps. The solution I chose was to quickly create a spread sheet that I could save on my computer.

The next problem was ok... how do I share it with everyone here..!?

I chose a screenshot of the spread sheet in full screen mode. Here is the rough draft (incomplete) that I found...

The next post will show a map of what I what I actually did.

Here is a map of what I actually planted in 2008, keep in mind that most of the north end of my plot was destroyed.

Well, Now I want raised beds!! I don't have nearly that much even theoretical space.

I really like the raised beds.

It's only about 35' square. The rows are about 3' at the base, 2' at the top and about 2' deep. The walkways are about 2 - 2 1/2 feet wide.

It used to be flat and like concrete. Took quite a bit of work to get those rows up. But they work much better and are easier to weed and harvest.

Wthex~ Your planting plans are awesome. May I ask a question or two? What material did you construct your raised beds with? Did you use landscape fabric on the bottom of your raised beds?

I cannot think of an instance where I had two plants help each other personally but I did have a problem with tomatoes planted next to strawberries. The row of strawberries that was closest to the tomatoes did not grow or produce much fruit. I later learned from reading a book on companion planting that those two should never be next to each other. It was a long standing strawberry patch. I change which row I plant the veggies in from year to year and that just happend to be the year I put the tomatoes on that side of the garden. The tomatoes have never been on that end again. This old girl can be taught!

When growing up, we used to plant everything with a companion. Cucumbers got to share beds with Nasturtiums and Daikon Radishes. Tomatoes shared with lettuce. Corn with red radishes. Potatoes with anything we felt like planting between them (cauliflower, cabbage, etc). And there were marigolds everywhere.

This link definitely helps explain why some of the stuff grew the way it did, and why it was usually so incredibly prolific. We were accidentally following most of the right rules!

Hastur, how did you know what to plant with what? Was it some kind of family tradition? Interesting how this kind of knowledge proliferates, eh?

This information was always passed from father to son. Our society had a couple of generations there when food gardening was not so important. No more victory gardens. Stores carry produce from everywhere so our fathers did not get the info from their fathers to pass down to us. We also lost a lot because we were getting new information that applied mostly to large corporate farms. John Deere is not going to be able to sell you a harvester that will go around the nasturtiums LOL. Now we must glean information from fellow garderners and read it in books. I mourn for the loss of info that never made it to print. The internet is a great way for all of us to share and bring back the knowledge that is getting lost.
Here are a couple of great links I found while perusing old threads here at DG
http://www.companionplanting.net/ListofCompanionPlants.html
http://www.gardenguides.com/how-to/tipstechniques/vegetables/vcomp.asp

garden6,

Thank you!

Just used topsoil, compost and compost. ;)

110 views for this thread. There are a lot of lurkers out there. If you have an interest in companion planting or guild gardening please post a hello or just post the word interest. Some of us would like to see a forum devoted to these subjects. If you would like to see it happen, give a holler. I am loving the posts here. Chat up and say hello everyone.

Kylaluaz: Actually, it was a combination of things that were passed to my mother from her family, combined with a major amount of reading, some unusual thought process on the part of my father, and the greatest gift to farming that we could have had - the guy across the street.

Bill (the guy across the street), was one of a long line of farmers up there and when we moved to Maine, he befriended the family. He would explain about stuff that we asked about, and companion gardening was one of those things. (He also had a wicked sense of humor and boy did that drive my dad nuts, but that's a bunch of stories for another thread). He traded some services to us for a nice christmas present (large bottle of good scotch) and help from our family when he had something large to do (like fix the barn or mend a fence). He pointed out stuff like marigolds being good to drive pests away (the stinkier the better), how nasturtiums were good with cukes, how to use blood meal to drive away deer while fertilizing the garden, etc. He was a great farmer, and we all were very sad when he died at age 93.

He was one guy that practically never had the obligatory space between plants - spaces were nearly always filled with other stuff. So a row of tomatoes would have radishes and/or swiss chard between the plants, or the squash had pole beans in little 'islands' between the plants. His gardens were amazing.



Edited to correct bad spelling.

This message was edited Jan 26, 2009 4:20 PM

What a wonderful story! You were indeed blessed to know Bill..... and to be in a family who knew how to blend all those streams of information. Thanks very much for sharing a bit about him -- and for passing on his knowledge, as I am sure you do! ;-)

I know the marrigold trick and I've heard of useing nasturtiums as aphid trap plants. There's also the three sisters plantings. Native Americans would plant corn, beans, and squash together. Beans fix nitrogen for the corn (heavy feeders) the corn supports the beans as they grow up the stalk, and the squash keeps down weeds and conserves water. And it's pretty much a complet meal.
The cooprivtive extention at your local university can be great resources. Sharon Brown (http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/957/ ) also wrote an artical about companion planting.

Love this thread. I'm back to gardening now that I have time & room. My teachers are long gone as I learned from my grandparents and their parents. My folks didn't/don't grow veggies (shame). My book of choice for relearning companions is "Great Garden Companions - A Companion-Planting System for a Beautiful, Chemical-Free Vegetable Garden" by Sally Jean Cunningham.

Good website:
http://www.gardentoad.com/companionplants.html

A fun book to read and one I have owned since 1986 is, "Carrots Love Tomatoes" by Louise Riotte, 226 pgs.

Jerry

Here is a book just recently published (May, 2008) that I'm very likely to add to my reading this winter.

http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Companion-Planting-Plants-That/dp/1933317930/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I350OH378KVHSM&colid=4IENHI5AKDAJ

As well as the one that ladybuggfan indicated earlier.

Maaaan-o-maaan, all the fun I missed!!

Just read somewhere radishes for squash (bug deterrent). And of course stinky marigolds and nasturniums...who posted that?!

I just ran across something that adds a FOURTH SISTER to the well-known corn-beans-squash trio, at least in the Southwest: the Rocky Mountain Bee Plant, Cleome serrulata, which the author (Toby Hemenway, Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, Chelsea Green, 2001) says is "virtually an indicator plant for ancient ruins". He goes on to say:

Thanks Potagere.

Now, here's something else about both cleomes and radishes:
Symbiont - Biological Pest Management Co mentions both radish and cleome as "trap crops" for Stink bugs/Harlequin bugs/SQUASH bugs; see : http://www.drmcbug.com/pests.htm
I notice that many source cite radishes as a "repellant" of squash bugs.
I wonder which is correct?

I definitely plan to do this this year. Incorporating flowers, such as nasturtiums and marigolds, and herbs, such as basil, particularly interests me. I'm doing as much reading as possible at the moment. I'd be happy to report on my experiences at the end of the season.

As far as the three sisters go, I'm wondering if my community garden should hold off on trying that until at least the second year. We plan to plant pumpkins and corn. But if the soil's as bad as we think it is, wouldn't the pumpkins and corn planted so close together make them compete for nutrients? Let me know what you think.

Does anyone know of a plant that would be suitable as living mulch for the corn in those conditions? Or maybe it would be better to mulch the traditional way for now?

you might want to investigate red clover. I understand it will do well in poor soils and it is a nitrogen fixing legume....... I'm sure there are other options as well, but that one came to mind.

My neighbor has the blackest and most beautiful dirt you ever saw in his garden. It is the only garden I have seen in this area of red clay and rock that reminds me of the dirt back home. Back home is all Mississippi River bottomland. The way he achieved this wonderous product is he broadcast turnip seed in the empty space left behind after each harvest. In the spring he just tilled all the residue into the soil. Winters are too cold to grow them so they died and rotted and did whatever else winter does. He has done this for 20 years and always has a bountiful harvest of everything that he plants.

Thanks for the suggestions!

We'll definitely need to do some sort of cover crop at the end of the season.

Good call on the clover! The book I'm reading says that it attracts beneficial insects as well, so that would be an extra bonus.

I'm very interested in companion planting in my Square Foot Garden. I believe I have a book around here somewhere too.

VERY interested in finding out how to keep my hubbard alive and pest free this year!