Everyone has heard of companion planting. Put a basil next to a tomato and it is supposed to help it make better fruit right? Not necessarily. If you have bad soil, poor weather, a cold snap, or you happen to have a pet that sometimes gets loose and terrorizes the garden... well you can always try again with a better plan in mind. According to master gardeners, companion planting has very little scientific research proving any actual benefits from the neighboring plants. I find that hard to believe! Still, I think it is fun to try for the experimental gardener, like me.

Purpose

In this post, I'm going to share some really inspiring garden art I drew, and I hope it illustrates something to help you learn about companion planting as well.

What I did was look through all of the companion plant lists, and organized family groups of plants that seemed to work well together. It's not perfect, because there always seems to be a few plants that form a love-hate triangle, and in that case, I chose to focus on my companion plants into bundles. Each bundle is super-focused to help one key plant to thrive, and the others might also perform well, or one or two might do poorly, but they will serve their purpose as sacrificial plants.

Note: My lists and illustrations likely only comprise of the plants that I plan to grow, as I was grouping my best choices together. I omitted some of the vegetables I am not interested in growing right now such as: cucumber, swiss chard, spinach, kale, potato, eggplant.

The Peas Bundle

Peas love the cool moistened soil. They don't root very deep, but they love to spread out and vine up around anything they can touch. Peas are extremely flexible and lightweight plants. Without a trellis, I've learned that pea plants will curl up into a giant tumbleweed shaped ball of vines. Peas don't require full sun, and prefer some shade temperatures to avoid the parching sunlight.

With the right companions nearby, peas can climb high, attract lots of pollinators, and stay pest-free.

Super Companions

All of these plants will probably thrive, while also benefiting the nearby pea plants.

• Aromatic Herbs (Cilantro, Mint)
• Beans
• Carrots
• Corn
• Radish
• Turnips
• Cucumber (Not illustrated. I'm not planning to grow it.)

Sacrificial Plants

• Potato (Not illustrated, I'm not planning to grow it.)

Potato does not like growing near Cucumber.

Drawing a picture of how you envision your plants growing together helps me to get a sense of what the end result might look like. Do I like rows, circles, groups, an even spread, or a bit of randomness too? Last year I decided I really like having a lush high-density garden plot with almost every square inch filled with green things filling the soil. Arugula I discovered does this quite well, as it self-sows too.

For the home gardener, I don't need the commercial sized crops, and so spacing out my plants seems like a waste of space to get less food. Instead, I am looking to have lots of options for fresh food available to eat from a small grow bed.

Site Location

I'm considering two different sites in my yard, both which receive full sun, but not all day long.

Site 1: Along a fence. Tall shady laurel hedge on one side, and ornamental conifer tree on the other side. Shade from the house in the late afternoon. Should help the corn grow tall. The soil here has never been worked, and there is a big old stump here. I might be able to use a grow bag to grow things on top of the stump.

Site 2: Lower yard. My shade garden is a at a slightly lower elevation. A row of tall coniferous trees provide a cool canopy 30 feet above, and plenty of shade during the noon hour. Rain water tends to flow down the lawn, through the moss, and into this site. A red leaf hedge grows behind this area. Not very much sunlight for corn. The soil was worked a little bit last year, and I have been amending it with more compost and sand to break up the clay soil.

Illustration

This image was drawn in pencil, and later inked in pen.

Markers were used to color in the image. Metallic green ink gel pens also added for special effect.

Anybody else enjoy coloring? I added some contrast to the black and white illustration so it would look more clear. Feel free to click the image for a full-scale view. I bet this would also look nice in watercolor.

Coming Soon!

I've got more Companion Planting illustrations I'll be sharing through the week. The turned out really good, so I hope you stay tuned and check them out.

• Tomato Bundle
• Brassicas Bundle
• Corn/Beans/Lettuce Bundles
• Carrots Bundle
• Apple/Fruit Trees Bundle

Thank you for checking out my hand drawn art illustrations. Hope you learned something too that might be helpful this year to some people.

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