I'm going to let you in on a little
secret... it's not just what you grow, it's where you grow it and the company it keeps!
Hi I'm Ben and until recently much of companion planting was based on little more than hearsay
but now there's an increasing body of research that proves that growing certain plants together
can reduce incidents of pests, boost growth and even help to attract wildlife. So come along
with me as I use proven techniques to plan out my companion planting combinations
for the coming growing season. First off, a bit of an explanation: Companion
planting is simply when two plants are grown close together for the benefit of one or both
of those plants, so the benefit can be one way or mutual. That could be as simple as growing
nectar-rich flowering plants among your crops to attract pollinating insects or something like
two vegetables grown side by side to confuse or repel pests. So with that in mind let's look
at a few examples. My first companion planting combination is to tackle the green peach aphid
which is an aphid that actually infects more than 400 different species! It's resistant to more than
70 different pesticides and if that wasn't enough it can transmit more than 100 different plant
viruses! But there is one plant that it simply can't stand... garlic! With this in mind I'll be
planting garlic around my more susceptible crops. This garlic went in last autumn and it's come
on really quickly actually. I've also got some garlic in the greenhouse ready to go out. My plan
is to grow potatoes in between rows of garlic which will act like sort of pungent bodyguards
if you like! I'll also be saving some of these garlic to plant around my lettuces, along with
allysum which will attract insects or aphid-eating hoverflies - and you can see more on that in last
week's video, which I'll pop a link to down below. Tomatoes and basil, (which I'm sowing here) are
best friends in the kitchen but they're also pretty good friends in the garden too and that's
because basil repels many pests such as thrips. And if you happen to be in the U.S, basil also
confuses the moths that lay tomato hornworms. Just like basil, there's loads of research
backing up these claims. For example, folk at Iowa State University found that when basil was
grown alongside tomatoes, the tomatoes got a lot less insect damage. Researchers also found that
interplanting tomatoes with basil resulted in less egg laying by the army worm. So basil makes my
list and it's downright delicious too of course! Next up are those plants we can grow
to take the brunt of a pest attack, so that our more susceptible and
precious crops are left alone. Now for me there's one plant that stands head
and shoulders above the rest for this purpose: nasturtiums. Nasturtiums are a really really
very pretty annual flower. It can be left to sprawl around or trained up trellis to give
a bit of colourful height. And the flowers are actually edible! Use them in salads, in
cocktails or perhaps as cake decorations. Several insects including cabbage family-eating
caterpillars just love nasturtiums! Apparently they love the mustard oil it produces. So it makes
sense to grow nasturtiums alongside vulnerable crops like cabbage, kale or broccoli; anything
in the brassica family. Nasturtiums are one of those flowers that self-seed themselves from one
year to the next, popping up here and there. But in this case it's a really welcome sight. My plan
is to grow them alongside this bed here which will have the kale for this coming growing season. I'll
probably plant them in the path so they'll sprawl alongside them. I'm going to start them off in
plug trays, grow them on and then plant them out. There are plenty of other flowers worth growing
amongst your vegetables - plenty of other flowers! Of course there are the nectar-rich blooms
that will attract pollinators such as bees that will then go on to pollinate your crop plants,
such as tomatoes, squash and peas for example. Now great examples are the sunny side up, cheering
blooms of poached eggplant, maybe comfrey, ageratum and zinnias. But flowers have many
other benefits beyond attracting pollinators! One of the most powerful flowers is tansy. This
obliging bloom attracts all sorts of pest-eating bugs such as ladybugs or ladybirds, tiny parasitic
wasps and the minute pirate bug, which doesn't so much plunder the high seas as plunder other
pests! At the same time, tansy repels many of the baddies. It's a great plant; very cheery
and it's a perennial so you plant it once and it will give summer after summer of blooms. What more
could you want?! Just one word of caution though: if you are in north America it can be very
invasive so it is banned in some states and it can also cause a bit of an allergic reaction on some
people so do wear gloves when handling. That said, it makes the cut in my garden. Other flowers
I'll be including alongside nasturtiums and tansy are marigolds and calendula, which will
also attract all sorts of beneficial bugs. This is all well and good, but who has the time,
honestly, to research scientifically rigorous companion planting combinations?! I know I don't!
Which is why I love the online Garden Planner. Our team has spent many months - years even
- exhaustively trawling through all of the peer-reviewed research in this area, separating
what's proven from what's not. The result is the Garden Planners Evidence-Based Companion
Planting System. Let me show you! Take these cucumbers here as an example. Just select the
'Show Companions' button and the Plant List here is narrowed down to plants that are companions of
cucumbers. Take this dill here as an example; the arrow goes from the dill, which means it offers
benefits to the cucumbers because it attracts hoverflies which will eat pests. So let's pick
that up and drop a few of them onto our plan... there we go, perfect! Let's look at
this sweetcorn here as another example. Click on the 'Show Companions' button and then,
great, if you look here you can see the beans: the benefit is in both directions because the
arrow goes both ways and that's handy because I need something against this arch here. So
let's pick up the beans, drop them down and add a row there. Lovely stuff! The Garden
Planner takes all of the guesswork (and the legwork) out of finding the perfect companions
for my plants. I love the fact that someone else has done the research for me so I don't have to!
Lazy? Yeah! So what?! Smart? Definitely! Companion planting is a seriously powerful but crucially
natural way to turbo charge your garden's growth and with this Evidence-Based Companion Planting
System I can deploy it with ease. Now tell me, will you be making more of companion
planting this season? Let me know in the comments below. Please be sure to check
out our other videos on companion planting and if you'd like more evidence-based gardening
advice then be sure to subscribe and turn on those notifications. We're always looking for more
green-fingered and thumbed enthusiasts to join our growing band of gardeners and we'd love you,
yes you, to join us! I'll catch you next time. you
