Friends for Your Tomatoes -Companion Planting

Diversity is key

              Tomato is a berry (despite known as a vegetable), from the south and central Americas. Growing tomato isn’t always easy, it takes a lot of root space, some tomato vines can grow too huge and takes a lot of room in your garden and even tomato is one of the special crops which pest love.

So, here is a list of companion plants for your tomatoes:-

 Rue (Ruta graveolens)

Increasing flavour and productivity:

                                                         Most of the herbs can be used to improve the flavour of your tomatoes. Herbs like mint, basil, rue, etc. In one study they experimented with basil (Ocimum basilicum), rue (Ruta graveolens), fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) and peppermint (Mentha piperita), found that basil worked best in increasing the yield, while fennel reduced tomato yield but even decreased the yield loss caused by tomato fruit worm by 24%, rue increased the yield by 26% and tomato fruit worm effects were most seen along with peppermint and mono-crop of tomatoes.

Utilizing space and time:

Carrot(Daucus carota)

    Tomatoes can take really long to grow and produce, you can use this long growing period of tomatoes to grow other veggies with the tomato. Root crops like radishes, beetroots, carrot can mature in a short period and you can harvest it just when the tomatoes are about to produce. Leafy greens and spinaches can also mature early on and will grow side by side with tomatoes without any problem.

Increasing sol fertility:

                                         Inter planting crops like beans and peas with tomatoes will help fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil. Root crops (carrot, radish, beets) will loosen the soil, increasing aeration.

Pest control:

French Marigold(Tagetes Patula)

                    When it comes to pest it becomes too hard to control or prevent; marigold is really effective against nematodes and also attracting beneficial insets, one study found that it also reduces whitefly infestation when marigolds were planted along with tomatoes throughout the growing season. In another study, researchers found that white mustard and marigold effectively reduced root-knot nematode invasion by 53.45% and 46.38% despite white mustard reducing the crop yield significantly. Some plants can attract beneficial insects which prey on pest species and others will get infected by pest leaving the main crop.

Other companion plants:

Purslane( Portulaca oleracea)

                                          It is impossible to grow an edible crop in undesirable condition, but even that can be done with some help from other pants; In saline areas planting Salsola soda and purslane( Portulaca oleracea) along with tomatoes, reduced salt stress in the plant and increased yield by 22% and 33% when planter with S.soda and P.oleracea.

Kohlrabi(Brassica oleracea)

What not to plant with Tomatoes:

                                                           Planting brassicas with tomatoes inhibits the growth of the tomatoes. Fennel also reduces the yield by shaded out the tomatoes. It is also not recommended to plant corn with the tomatoes as they attract a lot of pest to your tomato. Planting potato with tomatoes may spread tomato blight.