Why Companion Planting and Mimicking Nature Will Bring the Best Yield
Creating an environment where flowers, edibles, and herbs all interact describes a version of companion planting that is approachable to newer gardeners, those who garden in tiny spaces, and those with room to spare. If you’ve decided to grow an organic garden, companion planting offers a way for you to grow healthy and resilient plants without relying on harmful chemicals for their survival. [Excerpt from the Doomsdate Prepper Gardener's Handbook]
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How to Grow Healthy, Productive Vegetables, Herbs, and Flowers either from Seed or Transplanting, Composting, Companion Planting and so much more! Beginners and Experts)
[Download e-book Here: Ddp Gardener's Handbook]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In some parts of the world, mosquito ferns (Azolla spp.) have been used for at least a thousand years as companion plants for rice crops. They host a cyanobacterium that fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere, and they block light from plants that would compete with the rice.
Companion planting can operate through a variety of mechanisms, which may sometimes be combined.
Here are a few of such mechanisms below:
Provision of Nutrients
Legumes such as clover provide nitrogen compounds to other plants such as grasses by fixing nitrogen from the air with symbiotic bacteria in their root nodules.
Dandelions have long taproots that bring nutrients from deep within the soil to near the surface, benefitting neighboring plants that are shallower-rooted.
Trap Cropping
Trap cropping uses alternative plants to attract pests away from the main crop. For example, nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus) is a food plant of some caterpillars which feed primarily on members of the cabbage family (brassicas); some gardeners claim that planting them around brassicas protects the food crops from damage, as eggs of the pests are preferentially laid on the nasturtium. However, while many trap crops have successfully diverted pests off of focal crops in small-scale greenhouses, gardens, and field experiments, only a small portion of these plants have been shown to reduce pest damage at larger commercial scales.
Host-finding Disruption
Recent studies on host-plant findings have shown that flying pests are far less successful if their host plants are surrounded by any other plant or even "decoy plants" made of green plastic, cardboard, or any other green material.
The host-plant finding process occurs in phases:
The first phase is stimulation by producing odors characteristic to the host plant. This induces the insect to try to land on the plant it seeks. But insects avoid landing on brown (bare) soil. So if only the host plant is present, the insects will quasi-systematically find it by simply landing on the only green thing around. This is called (from the point of view of the insect) "appropriate landing". When it does an "inappropriate landing", it flies off to any other nearby patch of green. It eventually leaves the area if there are too many 'inappropriate' landings.
The second phase of host-plant finding is for the insect to make short flights from leaf to leaf to assess the plant's overall suitability. The number of leaf-to-leaf flights varies according to the insect species and to the host-plant stimulus received from each leaf. The insect must accumulate sufficient stimuli from the host plant to lay eggs; so it must make a certain number of consecutive 'appropriate' landings. Hence if it makes an 'inappropriate landing', the assessment of that plant is negative, and the insect must start the process anew.
Thus it was shown that clover used as a ground cover had the same disruptive effect on eight pest species from four different insect orders. An experiment showed that 36% of cabbage root flies laid eggs beside cabbages growing in bare soil (which resulted in no crop), compared to only 7% beside cabbages growing in clover (which allowed a good crop). Simple decoys made of green cardboard also disrupted appropriate landings just as well as did the live ground cover.
Pest Suppression
Some companion plants help prevent pest insects or pathogenic fungi from damaging the crop, through chemical means. For example, the smell of the foliage of marigolds is claimed to deter aphids from feeding on neighboring plants. A 2005 study found that oil volatiles extracted from Mexican marigolds by vacuum distillation reduced the reproduction of three aphid species (pea aphid, green peach aphid, and glasshouse and potato aphid) by up to 100% after 5 days from exposure.
Predator Recruitment
Companion plants that produce copious nectar or pollen in a vegetable garden (insectary plants) may help encourage higher populations of beneficial insects that control pests, as some beneficial predatory insects only consume pests in their larval form and are nectar or pollen feeders in their adult form. For instance, marigolds with simple flowers attract nectar-feeding adult hoverflies, the larvae of which are predators of aphids.
Protective shelter
Shade-grown coffee plantation in Costa Rica. The red trees in the background provide shade; those in the foreground have been pruned to allow full exposure to the sun.
Some crops are grown under the protective shelter of different kinds of plants, whether as windbreaks or for shade. For example, shade-grown coffee, especially Coffea arabica, has traditionally been grown in the light shade created by scattered trees with a thin canopy, allowing light through to the coffee bushes but protecting them from overheating. Suitable Asian trees include Erythrina subumbrans (tton tong or dadap), Gliricidia sepium (khae falang), Cassia siamea (khi lek), Melia azedarach (khao dao sang), and Paulownia tomentosa, a useful timber tree.
Systems
Systems in use or being trialed include:
Square foot gardening attempts to protect plants from many normal gardening problems, such as weed infestation, by packing them as closely together as possible, which is facilitated by using companion plants, which can be closer together than normal.
Forest gardening, where companion plants are intermingled to create an actual ecosystem, emulates the interaction of up to seven levels of plants in a forest or woodland.
Organic gardening makes frequent use of companion planting, since many other means of fertilizing, weed reduction, and pest control are forbidden.
Companion planting is more like employing nature to do your gardening at no charge. Get planting and have the best all-year-round yields. Happy gardening!
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