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Companion Planting Chart


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9 Comments

  1. Do you have science to support this theory? I’ve been told that it’s an old time garden myth. I can’t seem to find any supporting research so I don’t know what to think. Seeing as how you are a Research Institute, can you lead us to some documentation? Thanks!

    1. not sure I’d qualify this site as a “research institute” but I can tell you that most theories of what to plant next to each other & what to not plant next to each other boil down to plants that need the same nutrients. If you have two plants that both need significant amounts of potassium to flourish & you plant them next to each other, that area of the soil will become depleted of potassium and there may not be enough for competing plants. Generally you want to plant species next to each other that have different nutritional needs & ideally what one plant puts into the soil what it’s neighbor needs (that’s why we have 3 sisters gardens of squash, corn, and beans like the indigenous taught us).

  2. Hi Stacy, you can read my findings of my five year (and ongoing) proof of concept/demonstration urban food forest research project (in the following PRI articles:

    https://www.permaculturenews.org/2013/02/12/food-forests-and-natural-pest-control-observations/

    https://www.permaculturenews.org/2011/04/13/lessons-from-an-urban-back-yard-food-forest-experiment/

    I’ve included a short article on my website to explain how it works – https://deepgreenpermaculture.com/companion-planting/

    It definitely works, it’s not anecdote or folklore, that’s the line you normally hear from people who practise conventional gardening and have never tested out companion planting.

    Stefan, thanks for sharing!

    1. Thanks for the information. I managed to download and print some of the posters. Others are not available for printing, but maybe in the future. Very educational. Plus the videos were really interesting, even when I live in Minnesota.

  3. Here is a recent scientific paper reporting on research into signalling modalities between plant species which create beneficial symbiotic relationships between them:

    “Love thy neighbour: facilitation through an alternative signalling modality in plants”, Monica Gagliano and Michael Renton, BMC Ecology, 2013.
    https://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6785-13-19.pdf

    Their research is entirely consistent with Permaculture advice on plant guilds and companion planting. That’s no surprise really, since the technique works so well in practice, as anyone can prove for themselves.

  4. I will never cease to be astonished at how thousands of years of trial and observation are so easily dismissed by “modern science” types. Great chart Afristar. Thank you PRI. I printed one up for my greenhouse potting shed.

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