Companion Planting with Herbs
One of the things we love about herbs is the many uses they have: beauty, flavor, medicine, and food. One additional benefit they have, is as good companions for your other plants such as flowers and veggies.
Beebalm – very attractive to pollinators such as bees, bumbles, hummingbirds and butterflies. We have our beebalm planted in the middle of our winter squash and pumpkin patch – while it can be a bit of a pain to rototill around it in the spring, we’ve found it to be so valuable to leave it there for the benefit of getting all our squash and pumpkins well pollinated. It blooms later in the spring and early summer, so matches up well with the bloom time of our winter squash and pumpkins, while also provide another later source of nectar for our resident hummingbirds.
Beebalm – very attractive to pollinators such as bees, bumbles, hummingbirds and butterflies. We have our beebalm planted in the middle of our winter squash and pumpkin patch – while it can be a bit of a pain to rototill around it in the spring, we’ve found it to be so valuable to leave it there for the benefit of getting all our squash and pumpkins well pollinated. It blooms later in the spring and early summer, so matches up well with the bloom time of our winter squash and pumpkins, while also provide another later source of nectar for our resident hummingbirds.
Calendula – this sunny fragrant flower pairs well with eggplant and tomatoes. It is good to bring a wide variety of pollinators and we find the most amazing diversity of small flying striped bees and bee like insects visiting the flowers throughout the day when they are open. Calendula is also well loved by crab spiders, which love the wide variety of tasty insects that visit the flowers, including some pest insects. It can be a great border plant or even interplanted in your veggies. As an annual, it will reseed itself, so unless you set up a permanent area for it, it’s best to harvest and use the flowers as an edible or for tea or medicinal uses, so it doesn't go to seed. Even if you miss a few, calendula transplants easily, so you can move it to a more desirable location.
German Chamomile – lovely flowering annual, as an aromatic herb with a lovely floral scent with a hint of apples, it partners well with cole, such as cabbage. The aroma helps keep pests such as the white cabbage butterfly away, while also housing a wide range of predatory insects and also attracting pollinators to its flowers. It is well loved by small stingless bee-like pollinators, who can more easily access it’s small flowers, as well as ladybeetles/ladybugs – those bright red-backed beetles who love aphids so much. Like calendula, it makes a great herb to interplant in your veggie garden or on the edge in a flower “hedge” with other annuals. We've seen it pop up in many places around the farm, and since it makes such a nice companion, we often leave it where it comes up - harvesting it for tea for the winter.
German Chamomile – lovely flowering annual, as an aromatic herb with a lovely floral scent with a hint of apples, it partners well with cole, such as cabbage. The aroma helps keep pests such as the white cabbage butterfly away, while also housing a wide range of predatory insects and also attracting pollinators to its flowers. It is well loved by small stingless bee-like pollinators, who can more easily access it’s small flowers, as well as ladybeetles/ladybugs – those bright red-backed beetles who love aphids so much. Like calendula, it makes a great herb to interplant in your veggie garden or on the edge in a flower “hedge” with other annuals. We've seen it pop up in many places around the farm, and since it makes such a nice companion, we often leave it where it comes up - harvesting it for tea for the winter.
Fennel – This ferny-leaved perennial is very valuable in attracting very small parasitic wasps and flies - some smaller than the period on the exclamation point at the end of this sentence! While it is very attractive to a wide range of beneficial insects and may also be attractive to aphids, thus acting as a trap crop to them, it is best planted outside the garden. Like dill, we often find fennel covered with the hungry hunters - ladybug larvae. Fennel has been shown to be allelopathic, this means that it puts out plant chemicals that inhibit the growth of other plants. This plant is best planted by itself along the edges of gardens, to help bring beneficial insects in, and attract pest insects such as aphids, and keep them away from your veggies.
Dill – this annual, with its umbel flowers (sort of like an umbrella), is highly attractive to a wide range of beneficial insects, such as lacewings. The highly predatory lacewing larvae can eat a great number of pest insects such as aphids, spider mites, leaf hoppers, and other soft bodied common veggie pest insects. Additionally, it attracts predatory hover flies and ladybeetles (commonly known as ladybugs), as well as parasitic wasps. We fequently find young dill plants covered with the larvae of ladybugs; the larvae are often the most voracious step of the ladybug lifecycle. It is a great plant to scatter in the veggie garden for cole crops, such as cabbage, kale, broccoli and others. While dill and pickles are practically synonymous, cucumbers do not do well with aromatic herbs such as dill (or German chamomile), so it’s best to keep them a bit separated within the garden. If you miss harvesting a few heads, it is likely that you will have some volunteer dill plants in next years garden - we find them easy to transplant to where we want them.
Dill – this annual, with its umbel flowers (sort of like an umbrella), is highly attractive to a wide range of beneficial insects, such as lacewings. The highly predatory lacewing larvae can eat a great number of pest insects such as aphids, spider mites, leaf hoppers, and other soft bodied common veggie pest insects. Additionally, it attracts predatory hover flies and ladybeetles (commonly known as ladybugs), as well as parasitic wasps. We fequently find young dill plants covered with the larvae of ladybugs; the larvae are often the most voracious step of the ladybug lifecycle. It is a great plant to scatter in the veggie garden for cole crops, such as cabbage, kale, broccoli and others. While dill and pickles are practically synonymous, cucumbers do not do well with aromatic herbs such as dill (or German chamomile), so it’s best to keep them a bit separated within the garden. If you miss harvesting a few heads, it is likely that you will have some volunteer dill plants in next years garden - we find them easy to transplant to where we want them.
Yarrow – a lovely perennial that is heavily interplanted among our roses, we find it provides an excellent attractant for ladybeetles/bugs. We have one rose plant that does not have yarrow planted beneath it, and it had terrible aphids all over it. While the other roses, which are surrounded on both sides by yarrow, had significantly less. While harvesting, we often have to gently shake the ladybugs off the yarrow flowers. The leafy, ferny foliage along with its tightly packed flowers make great hiding places for many other insects. You can also plant it in a mixed herb hedge along the edge of your garden – it is lovely interplanted with other perennial herbs such as lavender, sage, beebalm, feverfew and thyme.
These are of course just a few of our favorite herbs and how we’ve successfully used them in our gardens and landscape as companions for our veggies, flowers, and other herbs. Check out the resources below for additional herbs beyond these six, to inspire other companion planting in your yard and garden!
Resources:
https://joybileefarm.com/companion-planting-herbs/
https://www.motherearthliving.com/in-the-garden/companion-planting-herbs-to-help-your-garden-grow
https://farmhomestead.com/gardening-methods/companion-planting-chart-herbs/
http://www.globalsciencebooks.info/Online/GSBOnline/images/2011/MAPSB_5(1)/MAPSB_5(1)54-57o.pdf
https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/catalog/files/project/pdf/pnw550.pdf
http://chemung.cce.cornell.edu/resources/companion-planting
https://extension.psu.edu/attracting-beneficial-insects
These are of course just a few of our favorite herbs and how we’ve successfully used them in our gardens and landscape as companions for our veggies, flowers, and other herbs. Check out the resources below for additional herbs beyond these six, to inspire other companion planting in your yard and garden!
Resources:
https://joybileefarm.com/companion-planting-herbs/
https://www.motherearthliving.com/in-the-garden/companion-planting-herbs-to-help-your-garden-grow
https://farmhomestead.com/gardening-methods/companion-planting-chart-herbs/
http://www.globalsciencebooks.info/Online/GSBOnline/images/2011/MAPSB_5(1)/MAPSB_5(1)54-57o.pdf
https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/catalog/files/project/pdf/pnw550.pdf
http://chemung.cce.cornell.edu/resources/companion-planting
https://extension.psu.edu/attracting-beneficial-insects