BENGALURU: here are several ways by which you could make your vegetable garden super-efficient. One of the ways is by Companion Planting. Companion plants, as the name suggests, are plants that can grow together and grow well even where really close to one another, or within the same container. These companions help each other grow better, prevent pest attacks on the other and are also known to give better harvests as compared to plants growing all by themselves.
Dicotyledonous plants such as beans, peas, fenugreek (methi) have nodules on their roots, which harbour bacteria that help fix nitrogen into the soil. Vegetables such as tomatoes, brinjals and lady’s fingers (bhendi) when planted near these dicot plants, absorb the nitrogen and grow better.
Some companion plants when planted together are known to enhance each other’s flavours. This is particularly seen with the tulsi-tomato duo. Some of the tastiest tomatoes are the ones that have tulsis and other basils growing by their side.
Whiteflies or Aphids are notoriously famous for wreaking havoc to vegetable crops. These whiteflies have a greater liking to cowpea (alsandi) than they do for vegetable crops. A cowpea plant growing near the vegetable crops would attract most, if not all the whiteflies saving all the other vegetables crops. Herbs such as tulsi, lemon grass, rosemary, dill, lettuce and celery when planted with other vegetables would drastically reduce the pest incidence in the garden.
We give a list (see box) to help you to grow your vegetables along with their best companion plants.
Monocotyledonous plants such as ragi, jowar, bajra grow well with dicotyledonous plants such as beans, peas and fenugreek (methi). Nitrogen fixing dicotyledonous plants grow well with non-nitrogen fixing veggies. Planting root vegetables and creepers in the same area would conserve space.
Exercise of the week
Collect dry leaves. Cover the soil in your pot with these dry leaves and water your plants as usual. Observe for how long moisture is retained within the soil in the presence and the absence of these dry leaves.