Plant with Purpose

You can optimize your urban homesteading results by planting with purpose, ie: pairing plants that work well together. Some plants are amazing at repelling insects while others can actually aerate the soil around them or improve soil quality for other plants. Take advantage of what I’ve learned through the years by grouping the following plants side by side:

• Squash + Dill: Squash requires pollinators (aka bees) to flourish so invite the bees into your garden by planting flowering herbs such as dill near patches of summer squash.

• Calendula + Cabbage: Calendula flowers make a sticky substance on their stems that attract aphids and traps them there. These are small insects that feed by sucking the nutrients out of plants and can be very harmful to plants. I’ve found that planting calendula next to my brassica crops like cabbage, Brussel sprouts & broccoli helps to keep those littler buggers away from my veg. As an added bonus calendula draws in lady bugs which happen to eat aphids, win-win.

• Tomatoes + Basil: Not only do these two flavours pair beautifully together in summer cooking, they also thrive when planted together. Some gardeners believe that basil improves the flavour of tomatoes by simply being near it but it’s primarily planted because its strong scent can repel pests.

• Lettuce + Chives: Aphids tend to stay away from plants with strong odours – like chives & garlic. Lettuce are delicate and especially vulnerable to pests so I like to plant as many ‘smelly’ herbs as possible around my lettuce plants to keep the bugs away.

• Chamomile + Broccoli: Chamomile is said to bring in the beneficial insects to pollinate brassicas vegetables, like broccoli.