Garlic Companion Planting Guide: 7 Plants to Grow With Garlic

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:

• 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.
• Attract beneficial insects. Pollinators like 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.
• 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 and well-fed.
• Encourage faster growth or 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, leading to quicker and better harvests for home gardeners.
• 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 need it.
• Provide necessary shade. Plants that grow tall and leafy (like zucchini and asparagus) can provide welcome shade for sun-sensitive plants beneath them.
• 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.

Garlic acts as a natural fungicide for many other vegetables and herbs—either through what it leaves behind in the soil or from the aromatic compounds in the stocks from the garlic bulb (called the scapes) that grow above ground. Garlic can also be made into a natural pest spray made with one or two garlic cloves diluted with water.

1. 1. Fruit trees. Garlic helps repel pests that are harmful to fruit trees, like caterpillars, aphids, Japanese beetles, and borers. Garlic can also help attract pollinating insects, which is crucial for growing fruit.
2. 2. Tomatoes. Garlic helps repel pests that eat away at your tomato plants, like spider mites.
   
3. 3. Brassicas. Garlic is great to grow alongside members of the Brassica family, like kale, kohlrabi, cabbage, and cauliflower. Garlic helps to repel cabbage loopers, cabbage maggots, cabbage worms, and Japanese beetles from vulnerable crops.
4. 4. Potatoes. Garlic is an extremely effective fungicide used to curb late potato blight. Just blend garlic a couple of garlic cloves with water and spray on the infested plant.
5. 5. Tarragon. This sharp, savory herb helps speed garlic growth.
6. 6. Roses. Planting garlic (or any other particularly fragrant herb or flower, like chives, nasturtiums, or marigolds) helps protect roses from aphid infestation.

Garlic is not an ideal companion plant for beans (it stunts their growth), but you can still use beans to prepare your garden for garlic. If your garlic has prematurely yellow scapes in early spring, it may be a sign that your soil needs more nitrogen. Bush peans and pole beans improve the nitrogen content of the soil. Once you've harvested your garlic, plant beans to ensure that your soil is replete with nitrogen by the time the next garlic planting season rolls around in the fall.

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