Your tomato bed is a great opportunity to use companion planting or perma-culture.
If you trellis your tomatoes well, they give you lots of ground space to squeeze in many companion plants alongside them, that not only benefits the tomato plant but will also benefit you.
Here I show you good companions for tomatoes and a real-life example of a permaculture tomato bed.
Let’s Dive In…
Companion Plants for Tomatoes | Permaculture Gardening
Growing a permaculture tomato bed is easy since tomatoes, fortunately, go well with many other veggies, herbs, and flowers.
And if you trellis them well, along with pruning them well throughout the season, you can plant as much as you want right next the plants.
This is great if you are growing several tomato plants and want to have more than just a simple row of tomatoes.
Tomato companion plants are:
- peppers
- onions
- beets or carrots
- celery
- summer squash or cucumbers
- sunflowers
- Any Herb, especially annual herbs
- lettuce and greens of any sort
- marigolds
- zinnia or cosmos
- nasturtiums
- Small fruit trees or columnar trees (tomatoes need lots of sun, so small trees work best)
Only thing that is suggested to not plant next to tomatoes are brassica crops: cabbage, kale, broccoli, etc. But even then, kale in particular usually doesn’t bother tomatoes too badly.
Planting other crops by your tomatoes can help with weed suppression, encourage good soil bugs to be present, and of course give you a greater opportunity to grow more food or cut flowers.
Real life example of a permaculture tomato bed:
In the bed are marigolds, sunflowers, zinnias. Cayenne peppers, butternut squash, and a pumpkin. A few beets and a few small kale plants were squeezed in at the beginning of the season.
It all did well, despite being flooded with heavy rainfall. The tomatoes quickly got overwatered and died during that flooding, but the rest of the bed thrived.
That’s It!
If you are new to growing your garden in a ‘permaculture’ style, your tomato bed is the perfect place to start.
Tomatoes are pretty forgiving when it comes to companion planting but benefit greatly from doing so.
Enjoy!
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Happy Gardening!
-Chelsea, The Cottage Vegetable
The Cottage Vegetable
Gardening & Preserving for a Practical Kitchen
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