Garden

COMPANION PLANTING – CALENDULA & MARIGOLD

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Plants that grow well with tomatoes
Plants that grow well with tomatoes

Orange Calendula Flowers

Yellow marigold flower growing in painted tin can
The very hungry caterpillar does his grocery shopping by scent and silhouette. The European vegetable patch, everything in neat little rows, is his ultimate convenience store. The snail can just slime along that generous aisle between vegetables and mow down each snow pea it comes to. One, two, three!

Let’s not make it too easy for them shall we?

You need to fill those gaps with companion planting! We want to propagate veggies not pests! There is no room for bare earth in my tomato bed this year!

Let’s begin by sowing seeds of Calendula and Marigold.



 
 

The Desert Echo's Tomato Companion Planting Chart with sowing times
Bee on Calendula seed head
To crawl amongst these flowers is, for a bug, like the overwhelming stench of a department store perfume floor, that sweet essence of tomato leaf gets lost amongst the confusing odours and they flee, overwhelmed.

French marigolds in particular are known to deter the nematode, those transparent, millimetre long worms that carelessly multiply in your soil spreading bacteria and viruses, leaving behind them a trail of disfigured and useless tomato roots.

The repellent effect of the substances exuded from their roots is meant to last several years after the plant has been long dead.

Whiteflies tend to plague tomato plants, quivering merrily under each leaf in shimmering clouds. Tiny sucker mouths by the thousand cause young growth to deform and wilt and fruits to become disfigured. Happily marigolds deter these nasties, whilst Calendula gallantly act as a decoy crop attracting them away from the precious tomatoes.



 

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7 Comments

  2. Totally love the idea of charting the companion plating list with plating and sowing times!

    New to permaculture and starting to get ready for next year (most definitely adopting your chart). Going to your archives to see if there is more on it and excited to see all your fabulous entries (!!)

    Reply

    1. Thanks for commenting YEP, I love hearing people are getting something out of my posts! I hope you found some more fun stuff in the archives! 🙂 😀

      How exciting you are getting into permaculture, please let me know how you’re going with it. Do you live in a city like me or more rural? I have been away in Tasmania for the last two weeks and have SO MANY posts planned and don’t know where to start!!

      Reply
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