You get the biggest harvest from your garden by using the space most efficiently. One strategy is to pair up plants based on their complementary qualities, like growth habit or maturity rates. Even better, by matching specific crops together they can support each other’s well-being in a variety of ways, including fending off pests and reducing weed pressure. Here’s how to choose vegetables to plant together and how to use them to benefit your garden.
How to Choose Plants to Grow Together
- Growth rates: When you seed fast- and slow-growing plants together, you can harvest the quick crop first and then leave space for the other one to fill in and mature. Radishes, for instance, mature in as little as 30 days. Plant them in between cabbages, which take 90 to 100 days to mature, and you’ll have eaten the radishes long before the cabbages begin to form heads.
- Productive seasons: As crops that thrive in cool conditions, such as lettuce and peas, mature, add warm weather vegetables, such as cucumbers and peppers. The summer crops will be ready to start producing when the days become hot and the earlier ones are fading out.
- Plant habits: If you think of your garden’s vertical space as well as its horizontal area, you can choose plants that occupy both. Upright plants such as corn and okra take up little space on the ground. As they’re growing, pole bean vines can use their sturdy stems for support. This leaves plenty of room on the surface of the garden bed for crops that spread out, including cantaloupes and pumpkins.
- Three sisters: Some Native American tribes have long used an interplanting technique for corn, beans, and squash that’s become known as the “Three Sisters.” The growers typically plant corn in small hills about one step apart, according to a report from the National Agricultural Library. Two or three weeks after the corn is planted, the growers return to plant bean seeds in the same hills. The bean vines wind around the corn stalks and the bean plants extract nitrogen from the air and “fix” it in the soil, where the corn plants can absorb it. At the base of the corn and beans, squash plants sprawl along the soil, where their big leaves shade out sunlight that allows weed seeds to germinate and the ground to dehydrate.
Vegetables That Grow Well Together
Garden vegetables that grow well together include:
- Basil and tomatoes
- Radishes and lettuce
- Peas and carrots
- Pumpkins or squash and corn
- Beets and onions
- Potatoes and eggplants
Planting Strategies
In nature, monocultures are rare. Instead, a variety of plants coexist together, making it tougher for pests to locate target plants and slowing the spread of disease. Companion planting picks up on that strategy. Planting marigolds throughout a vegetable garden, for example, can stop soil nematodes from harming tomato plants. And clover can distract rabbits from feasting wholeheartedly on your vegetables while also boosting nitrogen in the soil. If you're row planting, intersperse companion plants in each row or place them in adjacent rows. Another idea is to plant in self-contained pockets or"neighborhoods," surrounding one type of plant with another.
Mixing Ornamentals and Edible Plants
Interplanting edible plants and ornamentals has become popular because it allows you to start planting produce in your front yard. Even if zoning ordinances or homeowner association rules prohibit front-yard vegetable gardens, it's unlikely they'll prevent you from growing Swiss chard and kale among your flowers or chives with your rosebushes. Purple leaf lettuce varieties make nice edging plants, while many herbs look right at home in a rock garden.
By combining vegetables that grow well together, you can optimize your garden and make the most out of your space.
For more information on companion planting and plants that grow well together, check out Burpee's companion planting guide.