Everything About Companion Planting Is a LIE

everything you've heard about companion planting is a lie well mostly a lie let's talk about it so I've been on the record of saying that I don't like companion planting in fact there's a lot that I don't like about companion planting so much so that I'm really avoiding the term companion planting and I don't really use it even though there are some parts of it that are true the large majority of it is not true now the whole idea of companion planting is based around the idea that there are two plants that do well together or more than two and then there are some plants that don't do well together there's a bad side and a good side to companion planting but if we look at the term companion there really shouldn't be a bad side to it at all they just shouldn't exist together but yet the problem with companion planting is if you look on the internet people will say plant these next to these plants because there's a benefit but don't plant these plants next to these plants and from source to Source the information changes there is not a firm grounded standard that companion planting goes by and so because of that you have so many different blogs and and influencers creating these videos about companion planting and tying in the good Companions and the bad Companions and the problem is is since they conflict gardeners have no idea where to go and we've heard you and that's why I am completely moving away from ever talking about companion and we're moving into a different term that I've used in the past called intercropping so the thing that I really like about intercropping is that intercropping shpping actually Advocates growing a lot of plants in a smaller space meaning you're becoming more productive as a gardener when it comes to companion planting a lot of people get bogged down and overwhelmed and so they create a lot of space and they really have these zones in their Garden because they think well this plant can't go next to this plant because so and so said so but then you'll check another source and they'll say yeah no that those are great companion plantings but not that and that and then you look over there and you're like oh shoot I'm doing that so to just avoid all the drama in the garden and so everyone plays nice you end up spacing your garden out a ton and you end up losing all that amazing biodiversity which helps with overall productivity and past reduction all right so before we start actually planting stuff in the garden we're going to talk about the rules to intercropping because the rules are really simple there's only three and once you follow these rules everything else is going to make sense and you're going to have so many eyes open to your garden and you're going to say wow I can plant just about anything that I want next to just about anything that I want as long as I follow these three simple rules and so the world becomes your oyster and you're going to be so much more of a productive Gardener so the first rule we want to follow is plant height you never want to plant a tall plant next to a small plant pretty reasonable why you wouldn't want to do that because the tall plant will block the Sun from the shorter plant so for this example if we were to have corn right here and the corn Grows Up 5 6t tall and we decide to intercrop some lettuce near the base of the Corn the problem is the corn is going to block all that sun and the the lettuce is going to struggle and so if you follow plant height you want everything if you're intercropping you want those plants in that intercropping zone to all be kind of a similar plant height because you want the sun to be touching them all equally so nothing is being blocked the second rule is the plant's Leaf size now this bed right here we have planted out with only cabbage now the reason why we have it planted out with only cabbage is because when we do a dense high-intensity spacing of cabbage it allows us to grow a ton of cabbage in a smaller space but we opted not to intercrop this bed here simply because the bed is more narrow we can fit a whole lot more cabbage in this area because it's all going to play nice since it's all cabbage but because the Leaf size is so big you see things like zucchini things like cabbage things like pumpkins right they have gigantic leaves rubarb could be another example huge leaves and those huge leaves create shade and overall they're going to smother and push and knock other plants out of the way and you don't want to crowd for space but you also don't want to completely smother see right now there's lots of space everything seems like would play nice if we were to plant some marold in here or something in this open space a lot of gardeners don't have that future foresight and they say open space equals space for me to plant that's a good idea so I don't fault you for thinking that I'll give you an example we were doing some some furniture shopping and they had a room decorator where it was a simulator and you could simulate what your room would look like with that furniture in your room to see if there was enough room to see if it was too crowded super cool it was a very VR experience you can have like a walkthrough of your room you need to have a VR experience of what this is going to look like when it's fully mature because if we were to take that empty space and plant it out it just wouldn't Thrive so you have to take into account the overall mature Leaf size of that future crop that you're planting next to to know if it's going to be a smart area to inter crop all right in the third and final rule that we have to follow is root Zone you want to make sure that the root zone is going to play nice in this bed here we have this bed planted out with potatoes now you'll notice we don't have any other plants planted here and the reason why is because potatoes take up the root Zone because it's a root crop because it's a tuber that grows underneath the soil we don't want to be growing other stuff because the thing is that when it comes time to harvesting those potatoes it's going to mess up those other plants and if we grow other plants on top it's going to steal nutrients and water away from the tubers so they're not developing as as big as they could be and overall it's really going to be kind of a conflict you see if this whole bed was empty here there was no potatoes planted you could plant something like lettuce and something like kale just fine lettuce and kale the root Zone there's nothing happening below the soil other than just Roots the main function is to move throughout the soil find water find nutrients totally fine if it was say a carrot and a beet great that is awesome carrots and beets they're pretty narrow but they're both root crops they don't take up that much overall top space The Roots play nice right the roots play nice cuz they're both root crops but I what I wouldn't do is I wouldn't plant a carrot and a potato why cuz the roots don't play nice The Roots you're going to have a carrot that grows down and tubers that grow out not going to make sense it just does not make sense so you have to ask yourself if the roots will play nice another example example has to do with actual chemical interaction so for instance a lot of people know that you don't plant your garden near black walnut trees why is that well black walnuts excrete a chemical called juglone and juglone is a chemical that will basically stunt plant development same thing comes from sunflowers sunflowers will excrete a chemical that's how they get so big and so large is that they actually will stunt a lot of the growth in the surrounding area from The Roots they will actually stunt those surrounding plants so that they can have more of that root Zone to grow nice and large and huge so you have to know if the roots are going to play nice if they play nice they're good to go if they don't play nice why would you companion plant them together it doesn't make a whole lot of sense so don't intercrop those plants if they're not going to play nice all right so I'm going to share with you some intercropping ideas that you're absolutely going to love I've used them for so many years with great success and I know you'll have great success in your garden as well the first one I like to intercrop for not only productivity but also pest control that's one of my favorite ways to intercrop is for pest control because as an organic Gardener I try to use as few chemicals as possible even when they're organic so I will turn into something like neem oil if I have to but if I can prevent the pests that I'm spraying with NE oil by just intercropping it's a win-win the first one here is planting basil next to tomatoes it's the most infamous intercropping that you can have and the reason why is because the roots play nice check they get about the same height they get nice and bushy and when you prune your Tomatoes up a single stem your indeterminate tomatoes they don't block as much sunlight so the the overall Leaf size and plant height check check got three checks that means basil is great to plant next to tomatoes and the basil gives off a scent that Aroma of Basil as you crush those leaves oh it's just such a fantastic smell what it does is something amazing you see tomato hornworm a common problem in the garden a common pest they are attracted to the scent of the tomato plant the tomato hornworm has a host plant and that host plant is the tomato plant when the hawk moth is flying around the hawk moth is actually what lays uh the eggs on the the undersides of your Tomatoes The Hawk moth is flying around and is sensing the smell of the Tomato if you plant basil next to your Tomatoes the scent of the basil or the scent of anything you could plant Dill right Dill would be another one you don't have to plant just it's not exclusive to just basil it could be any tall fragrant herb plant some dill plant some fennel plant some you know whatever it may be right those fragrant herbs will actually mask the scent of the Tomato masking it to confuse the pest from knowing where that uh plant is so it's really helpful for Pest Control I'll give you another example the next intercropping I absolutely love for Pest Control are molds I love molds and a lot of you know that molds can be very beneficial but why do I like molds well they don't provide yes they are edible but they don't provide a ton of you know overall productivity they will fill out of bed and make it look pretty but the scent of the mirold actually is really great at a few things you can plant it in close proximity to your brasas not right next to them because the leaf size does not play nice but in close proximity there's been some good evidence that shows that the roots of the marold will actually excrete a chemical that prevents the root not nematode which affects things like brasas but you got to be aware that the brasas are going to trample your marold they're not going to play nice but in close proximity might be a great thing right close proximity is a little different than intercropping now what these are great for is the scent of the mirold has been actually found to prevent cucumber beetles so we're planting it next to our cucumbers here because our cucumbers they're not going to trample they're going to Trail and Vine and that's fine what we're looking for is the scent of the marigolds we're going to plant our end caps with these beautiful marigolds here our crackerjack mix marigolds and what's going to happen is as these fill out and Bloom those blooms are going to provide a beautiful scent that is going to mask the host plant which is the cucumber plant from the Cucumber Beetle which looks for the host plant so it's kind of just again it's kind of like throwing a smoke screen up they're there they're not moving but when the pest is looking for the host plant if it can't find it it's going to go elsewhere it's going to go over your neighbor's garden and then they're going to get them and they're going to ask you what you did what your secret was and it's such a simple secret you just got to know what you need and how to plant it properly and you're going to be awesome you're going to be golden another really great one that you can actually plant are onions so we're going to plant this whole bed out with onions but if you had onions and carrots they work out great because the root Zone they they work out well right onions they are a root crop but they actually form mostly on top of the soil the carrots go deep but they don't The Roots don't really ever intermingle they don't have a boxing match underneath the soil and so because of that onions and carrots are great because onions actually help to prevent carrot fly the carrot is the host for the carrot fly and the carrot fly will lay an egg and will rot out the center of the carrot and you'll end up with really nasty rotten carrots but to prevent that you plant some onions next to it and that has been factually proven to prevent carrot flly super cool root zones play nice tops play nice Leaves play nice great combo all right and last but not least I'm going to give you a cheat code for intercropping that's kind of going to break some rules but that's why I saved it for the very last because I didn't want to confuse you all by putting it in the very beginning once you understand these rules everything makes sense Until you realize a few of these cheat codes because for instance we have here this rhubarb plant it's absolutely huge we've allocated a lot of space for it because the leaves they don't play very nice they get real real big but right now when the plant is small we can plant some stuff that is very shortterm it's not going to be that big of a deal it's going to be fast in fast out these beets are going to be awesome we have some beets here that are multi- they're going to fill out and these are all going to be nice little zones of beets planted next to a rhubarb plant The Roots play nice they're all going to be fine they the leaves are going to be playing nice because they're not going to be that big yet and so everything's going to be fine another thing you could do is with things like radishes radishes next to some plants that might otherwise not play nice right you could interop your radishes next to something like your broccoli broccoli normally would not play nice it would get way too big but because radishes are fast in fast out you can apply this cheat code to kind of get around the leaf size or the plant size by intercropping those those fast in fast out crops and those are kind of the cheat codes that if you have a little open space that open space can be exploited to grow something that would otherwise not really do well there another great example our Tomatoes right our Tomatoes a cheat code is how we prune our tomatoes because we prune our Tomatoes up to a single stem we're actually taking what would be a really bushy plant and it actually opens up this amazing Zone check it out so if you come over here you'll see this zone right here is all open now one would say well as the plant grows that future VR Vision I talked about something's not going to play nice here because this tomato plant's going to grow out nice and big not if you prune it you can grow your tomato plant up and taking out the leaf checkbox if you prune it the leaf check boox is kind of automatically default check you can plant something like bush beans down here and Bush Beans are going to be awesome because the plant though the height is there the foliage is so sparse when it's pruned because you can prune tomatoes like that that this cheat code allows you to plant something like bush beans or beets whatever we've had great success intercropping those plants and this Zone here becomes available and that is awesome because then you have plants up top producing and plants down below producing and plants in the rows producing meaning this whole bed is chalk full of food and that means a more productive Garden so I really hope this video helped I really hope that it also kind of broke down some of those barriers of confusion I don't want anyone to ever do their research to put in a garden and then get so confused and bogged down from doing that research that it prevents them from putting in a garden or stifles how much they could get out of their Garden because they're too afraid to make a mistake and that's again the biggest beef that I've got with companion planting is the good parts of companion planting if it was just the good they'd be fine the problem is they don't stop there and they always have a bad there's always a bad to companion planting which never has made sense to me and so what I prefer is I prefer the rules to follow with intercropping cuz then you're only focusing on the good right you're only focusing on the good and as long as it checks those check boxes or you're using those cheat codes I gave you you're going to be fine so I hope you guys enjoyed I hope you all learned something new if you did make sure to hit a huge green thumbs up help spread this video around to more people because companion planting is by far in my opinion one of the biggest misconceptions being spread around the gardening community and probably the most common thing coming into our inbox so I hope you guys enjoyed hopefully you all learned something new and as always this is Luke from the Mi Garder Channel reminding you to grow bigger take care bye hey thank you so much for watching today's video I really appreciate it if you enjoyed consider checking this one out you'll probably enjoy it just as much I want to thank you so much for your viewership because without it this channel would not be as amazing as it is if you haven't subscribed yet it's free consider doing that we upload every Monday Wednesday and Friday rain or shine and if you need any garden tools supplies or seeds check out amig gardner.com we got you covered see you guys in the garden bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 74,944

Keywords: vegetable gardening, organic gardening, garden, gardening, growing food, vegetables, vegetable garden, tomatoes, how to grow, simple, sustainable, urban gardening, raised bed, permaculture, peppers, homesteading, homestead, simple living, garden tips, beginning gardener, first garden, seed starting, pepper, potato, carrot, onion, growing onions, growing carrots, growing cucumbers, grow from seed, compost, square foot gardening, migardener

Id: sJ6njAdEFZk

Length: 15min 2sec (902 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2024