Companions, before and after
Where a plant goes matters as much as when. This page explains the Companions card on every planting, the next in this bed line, and the check that runs while you add a plant.
The Companions card
On My Garden, every active planting has a Companions button next to Watered and Fed. Press it and a card opens with up to four lines.
- Grows well with. The crops and herbs that do well beside it. Basil with tomato, carrots with onions, nasturtium near the cucurbits. Where the crop has its own guide, the name is a link to it.
- Keep away from. The crops that should not share the bed, with the reason in brackets where we have one: potato with tomato shares diseases, dill near tomato draws the hornworm, fennel bothers nearly everything.
- Best grown in the bed before it. The group that should have held the bed last, with examples.
- Best to follow it with. The group to put in after it comes out, with examples and a line on why.
If a keep apart crop is already in the same bed, the card opens with an orange line saying so. If a good companion is in there, it says that too. The last line of the card names the crop’s rotation group and plant family.
The four turn cycle
Before and after come from the rotation most Australian home gardeners use. Four turns, then round again.
- Legumes. Beans, peas, broad beans, snow peas. They put nitrogen into the soil.
- Leafy greens and brassicas. Lettuce, silverbeet, broccoli, cabbage, kale, spinach, rocket. Hungry for the nitrogen the legumes left.
- Fruiting crops. Tomato, capsicum, eggplant, zucchini, cucumber, pumpkin, sweet corn. Heavy feeders that want a well fed bed.
- Roots and alliums. Carrot, beetroot, parsnip, radish, onion, garlic, leek. Happy in the leaner soil the fruiting crops leave behind.
So the bed before a tomato should have held greens or brassicas, and after the tomato comes out, roots or alliums go in. Herbs fit in anywhere and the card says so. Perennials such as asparagus, rhubarb and the fruit trees stay put, and rotation does not apply to them.
The same family back in the same bed inside three turns is what the check calls a repeat. Nightshades after nightshades, brassicas after brassicas, that is where the soil pests and diseases build up.
Next in this bed
In Your beds and plantings, each bed carries a short line. If something is growing in it, the line says what to plant when that comes out. If the bed is empty, it says what held the bed last and what to put in next. It reads what is in the bed now, the plantings you have finished, and any Rotation family records you have made on that bed in My garden records.
The check on the add plant form
Pick a bed, start typing a vegetable, and a box appears under the field before you press Add. It can say three kinds of thing.
- Keep apart. A crop that should not share the bed is already in it, and why.
- A good match. A companion is already in the bed.
- The rotation line. Either the textbook order (“Tomato after lettuce is the textbook order”), a plain “fine”, or an orange repeat warning naming the crop that held the bed last and when.
It never blocks the add. Plenty of good gardens break the rules on purpose, a repeat in a bed you have just refilled with fresh compost is your decision. The check is there so it is a decision and not an accident.
Where the answers come from
All 104 crops in the growing guides have a sheet. The companion and keep apart lists come from those guides, the same source as the companion chart. The rotation group is set per crop by hand. A name we do not recognise gets no card and no check, we do not guess. Plurals and varieties are fine: “cherry tomatoes” and “spring onion” both find their sheet.
The card is reference data and is free on every plan.
A few habits that pay off
- Press Remove on a planting when it comes out rather than leaving it active. The finished date is what the next in this bed line reads.
- If you inherited a bed and know what was in it, make one Rotation family record on it. That gives the check something to work from straight away.
- Read the keep away from reasons. Most of them are about a shared pest or disease, which tells you what to watch for even when you plant the two together anyway.