C is for companion planting with herbs – Tips and tricks

Propagated from last season's mint. All lush and ready for some summer love!
I love herbs. They are what I call quiet achievers. They don’t really require much attention and if you do plant the correct ones near your vegetables, they can be your plant saviour!! In this instalment of our alphabetical count down, instead of giving you a list of “you should plant X next to Y“, I really want to give you some tips on how I practise my companion planting. Hopefully you can get some ideas on how you too can make companion planting work for you.
With companion planting, I find it very difficult to practise in a small vegetable garden. For me, I’ve only got 1 bed and space becomes a very priced commodity. For the smaller, soft stem herbs such as basil, it’s easier for them to be planted amongst the taller tomatoes. But what about the perennial such as thyme and rosemary? If I plant them amongst the main vegetable crops, what do I do with them when it’s time to clear the patch for a new season of crops? It will be such a waste of resources (& money) to buy new herbs every time.
Rosemary for those hard to reach places
Do you have a hard to reach spot in your patch? I do! When we designed my patch, I made it a little to deep. I can hardly reach the far side without the help of a ladder. This makes it a perfect spot for my rosemary! Rosemary are really hardy, once you stab same cuttings into the ground, they will just grow, grow & grow! The best part is when you do clear the patch for next season’s seedlings to go in, you can give the rosemary a nice haircut & it good to go another year!
Herbs loves pots
So do I. I read in a gardening book about planting mint in the ground. It talks about planting mint in a plastic container and then submerge the whole container into the ground, in an effort to contain the invasive nature of mint. Presto! This gives me an idea – why not plant all my herbs in plastic punnets and pop them straight into the patch? When it’s comes time to clear the patch, I can dig the herbs up (container and all) and easily move them to a new spot. How good is that! Not to say that it will also be a good use for those plastic punnets that are slowly filling my shed.
Everyone has got different way of making their companion planting work; Some intentional, some accidental; Some fantastic, some not quite. As long as you keep trying, you will get there. Eventually.


Here are just a few ideas;