Cilantro Companion Planting: 7 Plants to Grow With Cilantro

Companion planting is a time-tested gardening method that enriches and protects vulnerable crops. Farmers and gardeners plant specific crops near each other in order to deter pests, attract beneficial insects, and stimulate growth.

Companion plants will either help a specific crop grow or will grow better beside a specific crop, and can do many support jobs in the garden:

1. 1. Repel insect pests. Cabbage worms, cucumber beetles, Mexican bean beetles, carrot flies, cabbage moths—all kinds of pests can plague vegetable gardens. Many companion plants (like marigold flowers, catnip, and rue) repel specific pests and should be planted near certain crops to keep them pest-free. Other companion plants (like calendula and nasturtiums) attract certain pests and can be planted a short distance away from your garden to lure those pests away from your vegetables.
2. 2. Attract beneficial insects. Pollinators like honey bees and ladybugs can use a little encouragement to visit vegetable gardens and pollinate the crops. Gardeners often plant attractive plants like borage flowers to encourage pollinators to visit.
3. 3. Improve soil nutrients. When crops grow, they take up valuable nutrients from the soil—leaving the gardener to do a lot of work at the end of the season to renew the soil’s nutrients. However, there are many companion plants (like bush beans and pole beans) that add nutrients like nitrogen back into the soil, helping keep other plants healthy.
4. 4. Encourage faster growth and better taste. Many companion plants (like marjoram, chamomile, and summer savory) release specific chemicals that encourage faster growth or better taste in the plants around them.
5. 5. Provide ground cover. Plants that spread low across the ground (like oregano) serve as a blanket over the soil, protecting it from the sun and keeping it cooler for plants that benefit from lower temperatures.
6. 6. Provide necessary shade. Plants that grow tall and leafy (like zucchini and asparagus) can provide welcome shade for sun-sensitive plants beneath them.
7. 7. Serve as markers. When growing slow-growing plants, it can be difficult to tell where the rows will be while you’re waiting for the seeds to sprout. Gardeners often use fast-growing plants (like radishes) interspersed with the slow growers in their rows to delineate where the slow growers will be.

Cilantro is a good companion to almost every garden plant, but there are certain plants that it will really help thrive. Here’s a quick companion planting guide to help you decide what to plant alongside your cilantro—from veggies to aromatic herbs:

1. 1. Anise. Anise is a lesser-known herb that grows in the same cool-weather conditions as cilantro, and planting cilantro near anise can help anise seeds to germinate quicker and more effectively.
   
2. 2. Dill. Dill, like cilantro, produces umbrella-shaped flowers that attract beneficial insects. Plant dill and cilantro together in your garden to increase their natural pest control.
3. 3. Leafy vegetables. Cilantro’s umbrella-shaped flowers are excellent at attracting beneficial insects (like ladybugs, hoverflies, parasitoid wasps, and lacewings) that will prey on harmful pests (like aphids, potato beetles, spider mites, and cabbage moths). As such, cilantro is an excellent companion plant to a wide variety of leafy vegetables, which are vulnerable to leaf-eating pests, including spinach, cabbage, lettuce, kale, and kohlrabi.
4. 4. Legumes. From sugar snap peas to green beans, legumes are a great choice to grow with cilantro plants because they provide much-needed nitrogen in the soil.
5. 5. Potatoes. The predatory insects that are attracted to cilantro prey on Colorado potato beetles, protecting your potato crops from pests.
   
6. 6. Tomato. While cilantro suffers in hot weather, tomatoes thrive in summer and grow tall during hot months, offering needed shade to cilantro and often lengthening cilantro’s growing season by keeping it cool and slowing its bolting process.
7. 7. Water-loving herbs. Cilantro grows well in close proximity to other herbs with similar water and full-sun needs, such as basil, parsley, and chervil. You can even plant these herbs all together in one herb-garden container for easy watering. Herbs that require less water (like chives, thyme, yarrow, tansy, and tarragon) or more space (like rosemary) may do best separately from cilantro, but certainly aren’t hindered by its presence.

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