Companion planting

In my last pregnancy update, I showed off my huge hill of  dirt that would turn into my pretty garden.  Well, with the help of the husband and way too much effort, we managed to erect the fence and plant the seeds.  Of course, the husband seemed fairly irritated on how I intended to plant, and keep the deep bed effective as it should be.  In case you don't know what a deep bed is/how it works, here's an excerpt from my current favorite  gardening book describing the deep bed method in greater detail.  For those who feel that's tl;dr, a deep bed is a garden bed in which the soil has been loosened 1-2 feet deep and the rule is generally not to allow any pressure to compact the soil (IE walking on it), so I've put in place some paths via 550 cord tied to the fences to mark them more effectively for now.

In relation to this, I had talked about companion planting a little in my last quick takes update.  Well, the following day, I spent 2 hours planning out what plant needs to go where to get the most effective growth and aide from the surrounding plants to hopefully produce a luscious garden.

Because tomatoes require the fence to support and grow, and the whole fact that nothing really likes growing near tomatoes anyway, they are at the far end starting off the garden.  Surrounding the tomatoes is my lovely cosmic purple carrots.  Carrots love to help tomatoes grow!  Its one of the few plants that tomatoes don't like to steal all the nutrients from, so they complement each other well.  After carrots, there's the onions.  I do hope I didn't plant these too late, but oh well if they don't succeed.  Onions help both tomatoes and brassicas while keeping the brassicas from killing the tomatoes, and are also greatly helped by carrots.  Another bonus is that onions are great at warding off carrot flies.  After the onions, I've got broccoli.  I do hope it isn't too close to the tomatoes and that both effectively grow, but we'll see how that turns out and learn from any mistakes.  Perhaps the onions are really as effective as I've read them to be, and everything will grow just fine.

Then, there's a 10 inch path.

After the path starts the corn.  Yeah, I decided to lamely grow corn.  I hope I didn't overcrowd these plants.  I guess it will be survival of the fittest then if I did.  Next to the corn sits the green bean bushes.  These two plants complement each other like peanut butter and jelly!  Both help each other grow super tall, and on the other side of the green beans is the spinach, which is helped by both because of the natural shade provided.

Lastly, as far away from the tomatoes as I could possibly put it, the lettuce seeds sit awaiting to grow.  Finishing off the garden, the garlic grows behind the lettuce.  I couldn't really find too much on what garlic benefits, except lettuce, so the spot fit well.


Lavender has been planted all around the fence in hopes that it wards off slugs.

So the order in a nutshell:

Tomatoes
Carrots
Onions
Broccoli
Corn
Bush Beans
Spinach
Lettuce
Garlic