Asparagus

Plant with tomatoes, parsley, basil.

Allow 5' between rows when interplanting with tomatoes to avoid overcrowding.

Controls asparagus beetles.

Aster

Plant along borders of garden, it will help attract beneficials like honey bees and Ichneumonid wasps.

Beans

Plant with potatoes, carrots, corn, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, cucumbers, and many other vegetables and herbs.

Set houseplants around beans outdoors in summer.

Beans (Bush)

Plant with sunflowers, they like partial shade and sunflowers will attract bees and birds.

Planting with Cucumbers, potatoes, corn and celery as well as savory is a help to these plants since they are heavy feeders. Beans create their own nitrogen and are light feeders.

Bee Balm

Plant with Tomatoes, it will improve growth and flavor.

Beets

Plant with Onions, kohlrabi, basil, beets, beans, lettuce, cabbage, and tomatoes.

Planting with onions helps repel some insects and deter weeds.

Bergamot

Attracts beneficial honey bees.

Borage

Plant with tomatoes, squash, strawberries.

Deters: tomato worms

Attracts: bees

Helps: growth, flavor.

Cabbage Family

Plant with potatoes, tomatoes, celery, dill, chamomile, sage, thyme, mint, rosemary, lavender, beets and onions.

Deterrents: Aromatic plants deter cabbage worms.

Thyme or tomatoes

With cabbage they help control flea beetles, cabbage maggots, white cabbage butterflies, and imported cabbage worms.

Calendula

Plant with tomatoes.

Repels Asparagus beetles, tomato worms, and other pests.

Best planted elsewhere in garden to attract plants to it instead of to the vegetable plant.

Caraway

Helps loosen heavy soils and conditions the soil.

Caraway and fennel dislike each other.

Attracts parasitic beneficial wasps.

Carrots

Plant with peas, lettuce, chives, onions, leeks, rosemary, sage, tomatoes.

Catnip

Protects against flea beetles.

Planted on border will keep cats from going any further into the garden.

Attracts bees, Imported cabbage worms, and parasitic wasps.

Celery

Plant with leeks, tomatoes, bush beans, cabbage and cauliflower.

Chamomile

English (Anthemis nobilis) and German (Matricaria chamomile)

Chamomile tea flowers and unwanted foliage and plants make an excellent addition to compost heap. Small quantities grown in the garden with peppermint will intensify the oil content, but if too much chamomile, the oil will decrease. Chamomile tea has been used to combat plant diseases.

Planting with onions and cabbage, it improves the growth and flavor.

Also plant with wheat.

Chervil

(Anthriscus cerefolium)

Planted with radishes improves the growth and gives them a hotter flavor. Can also be planted with herbs.

Chives

Plant with carrots, base of fruit trees, with bulbs and perennials.

Deters insects, helps reduce apple scab.

Chive tea made into a spray has been reported to help combat downy and powdery mildew on gooseberries and cucumbers. These findings only apply to onion chives, but some feel garlic chives should do the same thing.

Comfrey

(Symphytum officinale) Closely related to borage is helpful in much the same way if a few plants are grown with strawberries, it improves their size and flavor. They are an excellent addition to the compost pile. Liquid fertilizers made from old large leaves, which have been allowed to rot in water, then broken down in more water then applied to roots of plants have been found to be helpful by ESTHER DEAN’S gardening book. So check that out for more information.

Coriander

(Coridandrum sativum) When grown near anise, it helps anise seed germinate, grow larger and healthier.

Good when planted with chervil, but DON’T plant near fennel since it hinders germination of the seeds.

Honey bees are attracted to coriander flowers.

Corn

Plant with potatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers, pumpkins, squash. Vining things like this shade the ground keeping weeds down and use the corn stalks to trail up on. Great for mixed planting.

Planting with beans enhances growth of corn possibly due the nitrogen fixing by the beans. Alternate rows of corn and beans to ensure corn pollination.

Corn, Spurry

(Spergula arvensis) Interplanted in the garden, attracts predators and parasites of the cabbage pests. It repels caterpillars, aphids and rootworms.

Cucumbers

Plant with beans, corn, peas, radishes, sunflowers.

Vining things can use corn and sunflowers to climb on.

Dandelion

(Taxicum officinale) Plant along border of garden will produce pollen for lady beetles lacewings and other predators and parasites.

Repels Colorado Potato beetles.

Dead Nettle

Plant with potatoes to deter potato bugs.

Dill

Plant with cabbage, they help each other grow and improve each other’s health.

Also plant with carrots. Some report they are good companion plants, others say they’re not.

Eggplants

Plant with beans.

Fennel

Plant in herb garden since most vegetables don’t like it. It repels flies and Rodale’s recommends (Foeniculum vulgare) interplanted in the garden so this will attract hover flies, parasitic wasps, tachnid flies as well as repel fleas.

Flax

Plant with carrots and peas.

Garlic

Plant with roses, raspberries, herbs (helps herbs enhancing production of essential oils).

Deters Japanese Beetles and other pests. Plant liberally in gardens.

Horseradish

Plant with potatoes to discourage potato beetle.

Plant under plum trees to deter curculios.

Leeks

Plant with onions, celery, carrots.

Lettuce

Plant with carrots, radishes, strawberries, and cucumbers and at the base of trellised peas, as lettuce will benefit from shading and wind protection.

Marigolds

Deters many insects and slugs. Interplant everywhere. Use scented marigolds. French marigolds emit a substance that repels nematodes.

Mint

Plant with cabbage family.

Deters cabbage moths and aphids don’t like catnip. Control mints, they are invasive.

Plant with tomatoes.

Nasturtiums

Plant with Cabbages, Tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers and under fruit trees.

Deters white flies, squash bugs, and are a trap crop for aphids and pests.

Limits woolly aphid damage to apple trees if planted in a ring around them, but the nasturtiums won’t look too good.

Onions

Plant with beets, strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce, beans, summer savory.

Planted in rows with carrots can control rust flies and nematodes.

Deters: slugs, ants.

Parsley

Plant with tomatoes and asparagus.

Peas

Grow almost anywhere, adds nitrogen to soil. Growing interplanted with corn enhances the growth of the corn.

Peanuts

Grown with corn or squash, increases the yield.

Petunias

Protects beans and other plants in the garden by distracting insects from vegetables.

Pigweed

Brings nutrients to the topsoil.

Beneficial with potatoes, onions and corn if kept well trimmed.

Potatoes

Plant with horseradish (trap crop for beetle), beans, corn, cabbage, marigolds, limas, eggplant.

Pumpkins

Plant with corn, shields soil so weeds won’t grow and uses corn to climb.

Radishes

Plant with peas, nasturtiums, lettuce, cucumbers.

Deters: cucumber beetle and other insects.

Rosemary

Plant with carrots, beans, cabbage, sage.

Deters: cabbage moth, bean beetles, carrot flies.

Rue

Ruta graveolens can give people a rash similar to poison ivy.

Deters Japanese beetles, grow in area where they are a problem or scatter leaf cuttings where beetles infest crops.

Sage

Spinach

Plant with strawberries, and base of trellised peas. Spinach benefits from shading of peas and wind protection.

Squash

Plant with corn and nasturtiums.

Strawberries

Plant with bush beans, spinach, borage, lettuce.

Summer Savory

Plant with beans to deter bean beetles, and plant with onions.

Sweet Basil

Deters aphids, possibly repels flies and mosquitoes and mites. Slows growth of milkweed bugs and acts as a fungicide.

Dislikes Rue.

Thyme or tomatoes

With cabbage they help control flea beetles, cabbage maggots, white cabbage butterflies, and imported cabbage worms.

Tansies

Use as a live mulch.

Deters Japanese beetles, cucumber beetles, ants, squash bugs.