reviewed by Christina Lopez
Herbs have many benefits on their own for cooking, health, and even aesthetics. They can also make great silent helpers to the rest of your garden. Herb Companion planting can enhance the growth of some of your garden vegetables, deter pests, and even improve flavors. I am going to discuss 15 garden helpers and tools.
This quick guide will help you to plan your garden to get the most benefit for companion planting.
Contents
You can use these methods of companion planting both indoors and out. Outside gardens can benefit the most due to the larger spaces available to plant. Inside gardens can match smaller companions together in pots or near each other to reap mutual benefits.
Matured herbs that have been growing indoors through the winter offer a jump start to your garden. Mature plants are often very appealing to pollinators and beneficial predators. This will aid your young plants and give them a chance to grow undisturbed.
If you are moving Inside plants outside make sure you harden them off first! Acclimating your plants will ensure they are not damaged by the change in conditions.
So many varieties to choose from with this flavorful herb. It loves heat, so be careful not to plant or move out too early. A good rule is to grow it while you would plant other warm-weather crops like tomatoes.
⇒ Learn more about Growing Basil on this site here. How to Grow Basil Indoors
It can increase the yield of tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. The scent deters mosquitoes and flies. It also helps mask the smell of your plants, keeping them disguised from the dreaded hornworm. Basil also aids the growth of asparagus, oregano, and petunia flowers.
You can aid basil by planting chamomile or anise in the same bed or a container. It can increase the growth and flavor of your basil.
Sage and Rue are no friends of basil, and they can harm the growth.
Indoor Container idea. Plant basil with chamomile for a pretty container with a lot of mutual benefits!
I fell in love with borage flavor a few years ago. The light cucumber-like flavor is a delight in salads and teas. Better yet is I found it to be the best horn worm deterrent I have seen.
Best known to deter hornworms, so plant near tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. These plants are prone to these types of worms. They can also prevent cabbage and squash moths-plants near squash, melons, and cabbage family.
No one plant helps or is harmed by Borage. Also, Borage tilled into the soil or added to compost adds a slow-release fertilizer.
Borage tolerates cool weather and can be started earlier. This can boost pollinators in the garden in advance for many plants in the garden
Chives are a perennial that can grow and be harvested for many years in US hardiness zone 3 - 9. The more they are trimmed, the more they grow and flourish. The flowers draw pollinators, and their scent repels many types of egg-laying moths and butterflies.
Peppers love chives, and they improve the flavor of each other. Besides, chives repel aphids on peppers and other plants. They work well with tomatoes, carrots, beets, and roses. Matured chive plantings around roses can prevent black spots, and around apple trees, scab.
Chives enjoy loose soil and do well when planted with root vegetables that allow for airflow to their roots; For example, carrots, beets, and radishes. They are also particularly fond of kohlrabi, even though the bulb grows above the soil.
Peas, beans, asparagus, and spinach are not friends with chives.
Indoors Chives do great potted with herbal flower varieties like pot marigold (calendula). Or pair with fast growing veggies like radish varieties.
This herb likes to bring out the goodness in other herbs and vegetables by increasing their natural oils and flavors. Besides, chamomile can be an early spring addition attracting early pollinators and beneficial predators. Predators like wasps and hoverflies can help your garden by getting rid of harmful insects.
An excellent companion to the cabbage family (Brassica family) of plants and cucumbers. They help increase their growth and flavor.
Chamomile has no enemies and grows well with about everything. Also often referred to as the nurse plant. It has long been believed that planting chamomile near your plants keeps them all healthy.
Chamomile does well indoors with most other herbs and flowers. I like it with low growing creeping thyme, makes a pretty planting together.
Cilantro is the more calm weather green harvest and coriander the bolted seed of this flavorful herb. This herb likes to go out in early cool spring weather and can even tolerate some light frost.
Does very well with other herbs like anise, dill, and parsley. Plant near your potato crops to deter potato beetles. Does well with greens like spinach, kale, and lettuces.
Fennel. Fennel does not get along with many others but is particularly naughty with cilantro. It will wilt and die when planted together.
To keep cilantro from bolting inside planting works well because of consistent temperatures. Looks nice with curled parsley and they benefit each other's growth.
I love pickles, but dill is so much more than that as an herb. The flavoring dill offers in so many dishes is unique. It enjoys the cool weather at the beginning of the growing season. When the heat hits, it will bolt but leave it there. It makes an excellent food source to go for caterpillars and butterflies to save your growing plants.
A great partner with lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, corn, and onion varieties attracts a ton of bees and predatory wasps to your garden.
Carrots and lavender. It also attracts hornworms, so keep away from tomatoes and peppers that are a loved treat to this worm foe.
Smaller dill fern leaf grows well indoors. I like to keep it in a pot alone or paired with nasturtiums that like to use the dill fan to climb on.
Lavender is a beautifully scented perennial that should be potted and moved closer to the garden. Direct in the garden is not very beneficial to the lavender or your plants. Excellent at attracting pollinators to the area.
Use containers of lavender near plantings of broccoli and cauliflower. It will confuse the cabbage moth and butterfly.
Lavender also repels deer! In my area, deer is an issue. Natural plants that can create a barrier and confusion for deer are a plus. Plant Lavender or place containers in the corners of your garden to help deter deer.
Lavender and Echinacea are great friends inside and out. They both have similar growing conditions and look great together!
I love how marigolds help in the garden. Word of warning, though! Make sure if you plant them in the garden, you pull the flower heads before fall, or you will have a garden full of marigolds the next year! Calendulas are the edible flower used to make delicious teas and more.
The root nematode destroyer, the marigold! They work well with almost every vegetable and herb. They are good with beans, squash, melons, radish, carrots, tomatoes, thyme, and parsley.
I enjoy calendula tea plus they are pretty. Indoors I like to pair them in pots with chives or any other herb to add color.
I cannot stress the importance of growing mint in containers enough! They will take over your garden if planted direct. Please take heed. Learn from my mistakes!
Tomato and cabbage benefit from mint when planted near. The scent of mint repels many of the enemies that like to feed on these plants. Besides, crushed mint leaves scattered around the squash, melons, and brassica family act as barriers for cabbage moths and root maggots.
Many mint varieties, like lemon balm, peppermint, sweet mint, spearmint, etc., are natural repellents. Planted near the garden, they can help repel mosquitoes, mice, fleas, flea beetles, ants, mice, and more.
It would help if you kept Mint and parsley away from each other.
An Indoor favorite, mint is an easy grower inside. It has limited light requirements and is very easy to care for. Read more: Growing Mint in Containers
The entire nasturtium plant is edible with a delicious peppery kick. It adds beauty and benefit to the garden inside and out. This is one of my favorite herb companion planting weapons.
Flavor improvement in melons, squash, and cucumbers. Also, an excellent attractant for caterpillars, aphids, and whiteflies. When planted around the garden will draw attention away from your vegetables. They need very little calcium, so benefit calcium lovers like cabbage family and tomatoes.
Nasturtiums indoors are a pretty vining hanger for window baskets of herbs. They look great and make great additions to salads and sandwiches.
Slower to start from seed but easy to grow once it gets going. Parsley makes a great companion to many plants and flowers in the garden.
Asparagus and tomatoes like parsley a lot and benefit in flavor and growth from being planted with this herb. Roses are also said to smell better when planted with parsley. Chives, carrots, corn, hot and sweet peppers, onions, and peas also benefit from parsley as a companion.
Parsley and Mint do not make good companions and can hurt each other's growth and flavor potential. Basil, although a mint relative, does fine with parsley.
Parsley's unique leaf shape whether flat or curled variety looks nice paired with any flowering herb inside, or bladed herb like lemongrass or chives.
Like lavender, rosemary should remain potted. It is a tender perennial that should be moved inside during the cooler months if you live below zone 8.
It works as a natural repellent for many types of moths that feed on the brassica family of vegetables. Rosemary's scent confuses carrot flies, so potted near carrot plots can add some defense.
Sage thyme and rosemary are all mutually benefited when growing near each other. They increase flavor and deter predators from each other.
Rosemary does not like Basil and should never be in the same pot and placed too close to each other.
Inside rosemary can be very aesthetically pleasing and pruned into shapes for added style and appeal.
A savory herb that offers unique flavors to many types of meat and rice dishes in my household. I also enjoy the smell of sage in tinctures and potpourri for relaxing anxiety. Sage makes a great herb companion planting with its wonderful smell and growth habits.
Beans, carrots, brassicas like broccoli and cauliflower benefit from sage. Its strong scent repels cabbage moths, flea beetles, and carrot flies.
Cucumbers and Onions are not companions of sage and can harm each other's growth. Rue is also said to be affected by being near sage.
Sage is a very pretty herb to grow indoors. When it is trimmed properly it creates a beautiful bushy growth that fills a pot nicely.
I remember my first knowledge of companion planting did not come from the traditional three sisters' knowledge. Corn, beans, and squash companions passed on by the Native Americans but by my grandmother. She would always say, "There is always thyme for strawberries." She would plant a ring of thyme around her strawberry beds.
Well, strawberries, for one. They attract the pollinators desired for the fruit, repel damaging insects, and invading deer. In the same way, they also benefit from cabbage, eggplant, potatoes, and sweet corn. The smell repels many damaging worms, including corn earn worms and hornworms.
Thyme is also very good at attracting honeybees to the garden. Creeping varieties make beautiful borders that create attractive barriers that draw in pollinators.
The herb that pests hate! It is said that most problems are completely turned away by the scent of tarragon. It makes me love it all that much more!
Eggplant loves tarragon close to it in the garden. Tarragon keeps the flea beetles away, like to tear up their leaves and improve the fruit's flavor. It can plant with about anything in the garden to benefit from enhanced flavor and pest repelling power.
Tarragons name origin actually means Dragon . I find that suitable as a fierce defender in the garden!
Even if you are growing inside alone or in a small space garden, there are still ways to add herb companion planting to your plan. Adding one or two pairings can get the most out of your herbs and edibles.
I have had small apartments and tiny yards in my past. I would use favorite pairings in containers to move out on patios or a porch during the growing season. You can learn even more about another way to companion plant here, on Wikipedia.
The story about "thyme for strawberries" maybe "secret" companion knowledge I gained. Many ideas I have developed about gardening have come from mentors that learned from their mentors. The heritage of gardening is a beautiful thing that I love to able to pass on.
Have your companion planted an herb that is not on the list? Maybe you have a secret combination that is a sure win for success.
Please drop a comment below; let's be the mentors for the next generation.
Keep Gardening Alive!
These tools can make your work easy-
So what exactly is a gardening set? These are tools or garden tools that a gardener needs before starting the growing season. Whether you are doing indoor potted or tent gardening, or outdoor gardening, garden tools are crucial. Beginners should look for a complete quality set such as etc., a stress-free gardening experience. However, even seasoned gardeners need to replace their old tools before starting the new gardening season.
Therefore investing in the high-quality set can help all gardeners irrespective of the types of crops or plants they cultivate. A reliable gardening set should include essential tools like gloves, tillers, shears, trowel, hand rake, weeder, sprayer, and others.
Weeding and digging are two different tasks that may or not happen during the same gardening stage. The term "weeding" is a process of removing weeds or unwanted plants in your garden. Hence it would help if you had a good knife for that service. On the other hand, digging is cutting or tilling either virgin land or a used garden. Digging can also mean preparing an old garden before the start of a new season.
For digging and weeding, you will need garden tools that are sharp to cut deep into spoil easily. Some digging and weeding knives have a slightly curved blade, one straight side and the other serrated. In most cases, a suitable knife for the task should have a calibrated blade to allow a gardener to gauge digging depth.
![Hori Hori Garden Knife [7 Inches, Japanese Stainless Steel] Durable Gardening Tool For Weeding, Digging, Cutting & Planting With Leather Sheath And Sharpening Stone](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51-xuDZVfkL.jpg)
A sickle is a weeding tool that has been in use by gardeners for many years. They are a very great tool designed with short handles, curved blades, and very sharp. As one garden tool, a sickle can be used for weeding and trim shrubs where needed.
The Sickle is easy to use the tool you weed by pulling it towards you while the blade is under the soil. They are commonly great for home decor as they look elegant. Usually, it made lightweight and convenient to hold hence no fatigue while using. Mostly, sickles are made of stainless steel, thus durable and not easy to break.
Have you ever heard of a tiller before? Yes, a tiller is a widespread gardening tool specially designed to break up hard grounds. It breaks loose the soil so to make planting easy. Tillers can be manual like hoes or electric and gas-powered.
The size of the garden you want to till determines the kind of tiller to buy. If you want a garden tool for tilling virgin land, a gas-powered heavy-duty tiller is the best option. A heavy-duty gasoline-powered tiller is ideal for a heavy task. But small front-line tillers can perform general gardening jobs like soil preparation, weeding, and composting in medium and small gardens.
Related Post: 15 Best Tiller for Breaking New Ground
The gardening hose is one of the essential gardening tools a gardener must-have. The tool helps ensure all plants are reached by water. A hose is an ideal garden tool for irrigating a large garden without wasting time or water. This is because you only water where a plant is, unlike other irrigation options like sprinklers.
Whether a beginner or seasoned gardener, you need a relatively long garden hose that can reach at least every corner of your garden. Hoses are usually made of vinyl or rubber. Rubber hose is so stiff, strong some with strong elasticity hence the most durable than vinyl. Therefore, rubber garden hoses are costly, but their value is worth the price.
Among the fundamental garden tools, the soil ph meter is the first to buy as an amateur or enthusiast gardener. The tool will tell you how acidity or alkalinity in your garden, patio, back yard, or potting soil. The soil ph determines the type of flowers, shrubs, herbs, or edible plants that can thrive in your soil.
So before deciding on what to plant during the growing season, find the soil ph and then find the plants that grow healthy within that ph level. However, before buying a ph meter, you need to look for the most accurate tool.
Related Post: Top 17 Best Plant Moisture Meter
Earth thermometers, also commonly known as soil thermometers, are specifically intended to test the soil's temperature. This tool is crucial to the gardener during planting and other professionals like farmers, soil scientists, and climate scientists.
Soil temperature provides beneficial information to the experts who monitor soil health and climatic changes. They can use the data to know how fast the climate is changing and how to counteract if the changes are negative. The soil's temperature helps farmers make decisions when planting seeds or seedlings since they may not germinate in cold soil.
Related Post: 10 Best Soil Thermometer Reviews
You can find this soil in various garden stores; however, they vary in quality depending on the producer. Primarily, bagged compost is a form of decomposed organic matter that serves as organic fertilizers. The fertilizer is good for building landscape beds or filling holes in the yard. In the market, you will often find them labeled 'topsoil.' You should be careful when buying bagged manure as some of them are just fake.
However, in most cases, the bagged manure can be beneficial in maturing the plants. For your information, the manure is natural matter and does not come cheap. Some bagged compost costs as much as branded potting soil, though it comes at a significant discount in most cases.
Related Post: Top 10 Best Bagged Compost Reviews
Well, garden gloves helpful tool to protect you whenever you are getting dust around your yard. Whether you d gardening occasionally or not. Touching things is risky, especially in the garden, because you may get skin cut or pieced by an old nail, resulting in tetanus.
There are various gardening gloves in the market, and the quality depends on the brand or cost. Nothing good comes cheap. A nice pair of gloves should look good, durable, water-resistance. If you plan to go pruning thorny plants like roses or blackberry, get a gauntlet-style garden globe.
Unlike insect repellant applied on the skin or cloths to make the insect stay away from landing on the surface, an insect killer is different. Insect killers are sprayed on the area infested by insects and kill any insect on the surface or attempt to land on the surface. The killer can be active on the surface until a specified period depending on the chemical's quality.
When a bag like an ant, pests, cockroach, and others are sprayed by the bug spray like insecticides or herbicide, the dangerous chemical is absorbed through the skin. The chemical instantly or eventually causes a ''knock-down'' effect which eliminates the bug.
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Gardening sprayers make a significant part of garden tools that a successful gardener must consider purchasing. The sprayer equipment is used to spray water for weed-killing purposes. Moreover, a gardener can use the sprayer to sprayer pest control chemicals like pesticides, herbicides, and reliable spraying liquid fertilizers to boost crop growth.
The garden sprayers come in various sizes and their designs depending on the gardener's land size wants to spray. Good enough, the units are multipurpose with uses like spraying crops, fruits, trees, livestock, and weed control.
Related Post: Top 17 Best Pump Sprayer Reviews
These are versatile automobiles that are used in the garden. The gardening machines are designed in various designed and types such as manual, electric and petrol powered. Typically, they perform the task by coordinating revolving blades to cut grass and other shrubs to an even height. Different types of lawnmowers have their blades working differently.
Lawnmowers are also multipurpose in their application. Mostly in homes, they trim grass to an even level in small or large gardens. Moreover, gardeners may use them in the farmyard to prepare the land before tractor tilling by leveling the garden.
There are two main saws a garden may have depending on his or her budget. If you are a seasoned or starter outdoor gardener, it would be wise to purchase your gardener saw. Standard mechanical chainsaw tools in the garden are portable electric or gasoline-powered.
Their essential operation is through the rotation of sharp teeth attached to the chain. These garden tools are commonly utilized for limping, tree felling, pruning, bucking, and wood harvester. The garden saw several safety measures such as chain catcher, chain breaks, and rear handle guard.
Gardening is a challenging task and maybe very tedious sometimes. For this reason, you will need something to support you after getting tired of captivating the vegetables, flowers, and others. To protect yourself from joint pains and something on which you can rest the knees for comfort, a super quality garden kneeler is is the solution.
The kneeler seat brings comfort, delight, and joy from the painful experience of working while standing. When shopping for such a garden, you should do a thorough review of available garden kneelers to buy the most reliable.
Storage shed is an essential investment in your home. It works as an outdoor enclosure used to store power tools and other garden tools safely. The shed protects the garden tools from adverse weather conditions. Some environmental extremes such as rains, snow, and other elements could cause harm like rust.
You can have a handyman build a well-secured but straightforward shed for keeping your farm tools. However, you may also buy the shed from online stores, and they come with directive manuals showing how to erect the structure.
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About Christina Lopez
Christina Lopez grew up in the scenic city of Mountain View, California. For eighteen ascetic years, she refrained from eating meat until she discovered the exquisite delicacy of chicken thighs. Christina is a city finalist competitive pingpong player, an ocean diver, and an ex-pat in England and Japan. Currently, she is a computer science doctoral student. Christina writes late at night; most of her daytime is spent enchanting her magical herb garden.
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