Complete Beginner's Guide to Companion Planting

I think there's actually some pretty good debate around this topic and we're hoping to hear about it in the comments section below guten well today's video this video came about a requesting concept A really age-old concept and that's companion planting now this is a video that we've spent a good bit of time researching and looking into the science the studies behind this so that we can start to have a conversation around companion planting and perhaps increase the amount of companion planting we do in our garden this upcoming season so this video is going to be a pretty detailed video it might be a little bit longer but I think there's going to be a ton of information in here not just about you know the history and what companion planning looks like but some of the research behind it so you can see where there have been some successes and then also where there have been some studies that maybe don't show as good of results so I think this is a video you're going to want to watch the whole way through because we've got a lot of information coming your way well let's first start by talking about what companion planting is and I think most of you are aware that the idea of companion planting is just taking certain plants and putting them close together planting them them side by side for Mutual benefit of some kind and there are a lot of different reasons why there might be benefits I'm going to get to that in a little bit but historically speaking companion planting is a concept that's been around for centuries it's actually been a large part of the gardening experience for many different civilizations all the way back to the ancient Greeks and the Romans now probably the most commonly known companion planting Trio here in the United States is something that Native Americans have done for centuries and that is the three sisters method of companion planting which involves corn beans and squash and medieval Europe marigolds were planted by vegetables because it was believed that they helped to repel insects and that's something that we still do to this day we use marigolds a lot in our garden as companion plants to prevent certain nematodes from coming in and attacking our fruits and our vegetables now the concept of companion planting has been further further developed in the 20th and even 21st centuries a lot of expert gardeners have really looked into this there have been quite a few studies certainly more than there were in the past where they've looked at some of the benefits of this companion planting to see if there was actual evidence and there have definitely been studies showing there is evidence of increased benefit to yield overall plant health and there's also been studies that have shown perhaps a lack of evidence so we're going to delve into that a little bit but first let's talk a little bit about how these plants actually work together oh and I should mention very quickly we're going to have links to all the different research we did to all those Source material so you can investigate this yourself as well one thing we don't ask you to do is to take our word for anything especially if it's research based we want you to know we're doing the leg work as well and you can listen to what we've gleaned from it but we want you to be able to trust your own eyes and do the research yourself too if you'd like now there are three primary reasons why people use companion planting Pest Control increased yields and improves soil Health now one of the most commonly perceived benefits of companion planting is Pest Control whether that means deterring certain pests from your garden or actually attracting beneficial insects to your garden for example planting marigolds alongside of tomatoes can help repel certain nematodes that are harmful to your Tomatoes while at the same time if you plant dill or fennel alongside cabbage you can actually attract beneficial wasps that can help control the Cabbage worm population and companion planting provides variety which can also make it less likely that you have some sort of pest outbreak because you're creating a larger more diverse ecosystem now a secondary benefit to companion planting is increased yields and this is done because you're promoting healthy plant growth when you're companion planting some plant combinations can help to encourage greater nutrient uptake can also help to keep the soil moisture at a better level which can improve the overall plant size and in some cases you can get one plant that helps to provide the nutrients that another plant needs for example beans can help to fix the nitrogen in the soil that corn needs for example which can help the overall health of the plant and on top of that some plants can also act as natural mulches where they provide really good ground cover which helps to increase again that moisture retention all of that can lead to a better overall yield because of healthier plants now another potential benefit of companion planting is the overall improved soil Health some plant combinations help to improve the amount of organic matter in the soil some plants again like your legumes your beans your peas they'll go in and help to fix the nitrogen levels in the soil when they die back and in addition to this certain combinations of plants also help to reduce the amount of potential soil erosion and nutrient leaching that can happen which again is going to help improve your soil's health and there are other examples of how that can happen as well now I'm going to explain a little bit about the science behind companion planting one explanation behind the benefits of companion planting is allelopathy a pretty simple way to think about allelopathy is to think of chemical interactions between plants that either inhibit or encourage growth for example and you might not know this but sunflowers should not be planted near beans or potatoes because the chemical interaction between the two of them the chemicals that the sunflower give off can actually cause harm to those crops whereas the chemicals released by plants like marigolds can actually have a net positive impact on the plants around them because of the repelling of pests so depending on the way in which you plant you can use allelopathy to your benefit in the garden now another explanation behind companion planting is the use of insectory plants and I actually talked about this a little bit earlier when I mentioned plants like fennel and Dill being planted near cabbage in an attempt to try to reduce the amount of cabbage worms by attracting certain insects like valuable wasps into the garden to prevent those pests and we've talked a little bit about marigolds as well but there are certainly other plants that do the same thing but the idea is that insectory plants when companion planted should have the benefit of again adding or deterring the insects that you do or don't want in your garden another example of this would be planting yarrow which is a beautiful plant or chamomile which I have to warn you can spread everywhere if you're not careful but planting those near your strawberries because the chemicals from those plants will help to deter any spider mites that might come along and a third potential scientific explanation behind companion planting is the idea of nutrient cycling and I've addressed this when I've talked a little bit about what the legumes do in terms of nitrogen fixing but basically the plants being able to help each other out by providing nutrients back into the soil that another plant might need and that cycle continuing and benefiting all your plants is another reason why companion planting might have the positive impacts that some Studies have shown now there are certainly different techniques for companion planting but one way to try to categorize this is to look at the role the specific types of plants play in this ecosystem and I'm going to start with trap crops now trap crops are typically grown in order to attract attention away from a main crop from certain pests a specific example of this would be planting radishes near to squash in order to try to attract squash bugs away from the main squash plant that reduction in pressure from pesks and certainly helped to increase the overall plant product activity and beneficial plant growth you can also plant trap crops in order to attract insects like lacewings or ladybugs into the garden a second category of companion plant is Nurse crops and nurse crops are temporary crops planted alongside longer term crops in order to support their earlier development and growth these nurse crops are typically fast growing and a great example of this would be planting Clover or oats near to a fruit tree early on that's going to prevent any kind of soil erosion from happening and again any of that nutrient leaching and this can also result in nitrogen fixing for the soil and providing some good shade and protection for that longer term plant as it gets itself established now the third type of companion planting would be the three sisters which again is the Native American style of planting and it's a really cool visual image to create because you've got corn beans and squash and and as the coin grows it provides support for the beans and the beans provide nitrogen back into the soil to support the growth of the Corn and the Squash provides great ground cover and again moisture retention so it's a great cycle that supports each part of the ecosystem another form of companion planting is polyculture and poly means many basically polyculture is instead of planting in rows you plant multiple varieties around each other in the same plot now this technique can help to increase yields and reduce overall pest pressure because you're creating a diverse ecosystem one that can support all of those healthy insects all of those healthy microorganisms in the soil an example of this would be planting tomatoes basil and marigolds together because you're inviting in a great number of pollinators you also have that pest resistance there from the marigolds and just in general you're creating a great environment for your soil and the plants themselves to grow it a final category of companion planting is growing in Guilds where you take mutually beneficial plants and group them together an example of this would be a fruit tree Guild where you might plant plants like comfrey yarrow and dandelions which can help to improve soil Health fix nitrogen and attract pollinators planting in Guilds can have the same positive impact on soil Health overall production and plant Health now let's talk about the specific scientific evidence behind companion planting now I don't necessarily think that the home Garden is the best place for rigorous scientific research so what we're doing is borrowing from various studies that have actually looked into this process so we can see what that science says well at the same time we're adding our own personal experiences to this so we can talk about the anecdotal evidence that we've seen and as always we encourage you to go down in the comments and leave your anecdotal evidence too because the more we see the more we're able to learn from our community and certainly the more we're able to share with the community at large now I believe that companion planting is a pretty common practice among a lot of gardeners but the scientific Community has been debating this for quite some time and actually if you go online to different gardening forums you're going to find a lot of those same debates there as well but we have seen a few studies for example a study published in the journal Agronomy found that intercropping basil with tomato plants reduce populations of tomato fruit worm while also increasing tomato yield and fruit quality another example through the National Institute of Health reference the amount of insecticidal properties of marigolds when planted as a companion plant and added that it could also be a good deterrent to White flies however not all Studies have shown the same positive results from companion planting there are others who argue that we shouldn't use the term companion planting but should rather focus on the idea of inter-cropping or plant associations because that seems to be more credible and more directly address what's happening in the relationships between plants that could cause any type of benefit and so that's one of the things that's actually a pretty big challenge around companion planting is that there's just not enough empirical evidence yet and I think that's important to remember there are always going to be more studies especially as this remains such a popular form of planting in an attempt to improve overall yields Etc you know one of the things that we look at here is our own anecdotal evidence and the amount of anecdotal evidence that exists from other gardeners online Etc but we want to be careful in saying this is true or this doesn't work because our goal is to grow more food and to be more productive in our limited space and so we're always looking for potential productive methods that are going to improve the health of our garden space So based on the research that is out there let's talk a little bit about some of the best companion plants tomato and basil planting basil near Tomatoes can help to repel pests such as tomato hornworms and white flies and can also help to improve the flavor of tomatoes another great example of a flavor improver is to plant borage near strawberries that's one of the things we've definitely learned and borage is delicious anyway but that is definitely considered to be a plant that improves the flavor of your strawberries beans and corn planting beans with corn can help to improve the soil's nitrogen content as beans are nitrogen fixing plants now one thing to understand about how nitrogen fixing works and we're not experts on this but I've done a good bit of reading and it's when the bean plant dies back that the majority of nitrogen goes back into the soil cabbage and nasturtiums planting nasturtiums near cabbage can help to repel pests such as cabbage moths and aphids and can also improve the flavor of the Cabbage Planting onions near carrots can help to repel carrot flies and other pests and can also improve the flavor of the carrots peppers and marigolds and this is one that we have definitely companion planted together planning marigolds near peppers can help to repel pests such as spider mites and nematodes and I want to note that these combinations have been shown in some of these scientific studies to be effective but of course there will always be other factors that play a role in the overall production of your plants including your climate your soil and plenty of other factors as well so you'll have to keep that in mind too now there are plenty of other combinations of plants for companion planting out there and you can look into some of the effects of plants like your basil marigolds nasturtiums radishes Etc there are plenty of other options but what we want to talk about next is how to implement this in your garden so first we're going to recommend that you don't over plant because over planting can cause crowding and can reduce the overall effectiveness of what you're trying to do but instead focus in on the plants that you want to eat and look for beneficial companion plants for those variety studies because there's no point really in growing plants that you're not going to enjoy consuming in the end that's defeating the purpose of growing more of the thing that you're planting second make sure that your plants that you're planting are compatible if you have multiple companion plants that aren't actually good companions for each other because they have vastly different needs then the end result is going to be the opposite of what you want which is that higher production overall soil Health Etc because you're going to be struggling to keep them both alive thirdly consider the pests that are actually in your area and which ones you need to repel because different plants are supposed to have a different impact on the variety of pests that you may actually have to deal with in the gardens you want to keep that in mind and you don't want to rely solely on companion planting for Pest Control there are other methods that you're probably going to have to do because this isn't like an automatic magical fix for pests it's just there to assist you in this process and while Canyon planting when done well should help to improve your soil Health you don't want to forget that you still want to take care of that soil you want to add your organic matter Etc and if you need to fertilize you fertilize and don't forget the water all of those pieces are still important in order for you to get the good results that you're looking for and definitely don't forget to experiment around with various companion plantings gardening takes time so hopefully if you're guarding you at least have some time to get out there and play around with different combinations and figure out what works best for you that's half the fun of gardening anyways getting out there into a good Garden experiment well I think we went pretty deep into this concept of companion planting and there's probably more that we could have said the scientific literature shows that there are definitely some benefits possible between some planting combinations but of course there is some disagreement about that overall our research has gleaned numerous examples of positive impacts of companion planting so we're going to continue furthering that research we're going to experiment with this in the upcoming seasons and we'd love for you to be there right alongside of us this is such an interesting possibility there's so many ways to think about this and that's exactly what we're going to do well we hope you found today's video informative if you have questions about this if you have comments about this go ahead and leave them in the comments below folks if you did enjoy today's video don't forget to like it remember if there's somebody you think could benefit from this go ahead and share this with other community members and if you're not already subscribed Please Subscribe and most importantly remember you're with us you are good to grow

Channel: Guten Gardening

Views: 1,308

Keywords: guten yardening, yardening, guten gardening, gardening, companion planting, companion planting vegetable garden, companion planting vegetables, companion planting made easy, companion plants, good companion plants, companion planting basics and garden planning, companion planting for beginners, companion planting made easy! how to guide, companion planting made easy for beginners, companion planting marigolds, companion planting guide, complete beginner guide to companion planting

Id: tmtuNeIufaI

Length: 18min 26sec (1106 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 04 2023