Introduction
When most people start a veggie garden they usually go for the same crops. While it may seem like a convenient idea on the surface, it is far from it. That’s why you end up with poor yields. Instead, variety is king when it comes to veggie gardens. If you need topsoil for fresh garden beds you can search for “topsoil near me” and buy some from the nearest store. Let’s check out a combination of plants that lead to a high vegetable yield.
The Details
1. Beans – You can buy all kinds of bean varieties for growing a new bean garden. There are also numerous plants they can be paired with for a higher yield. If you want to keep it safe, it’s best to plant beans along with cauliflower, carrots, and beets. Apart from those crops, you can also pair peas, radishes, eggplant, corn, broccoli, and more with beans. However, it’s best to keep herbs and aromatics away from beans. Don’t plant peppers, garlic, onions, and chives with beans. That can have an adverse effect.
2. Beets – You can never go wrong with a healthy number of beets in your diet. Apart from being a rich source of iron, potassium, and magnesium, it’s also full of essential vitamins and fibers. If you’ve been disappointed with the yield of beets in your garden, you can grow it along with garlic to reverse that effect. Apart from garlic, you can also grow onions, lettuce, bush beans, and members of the cabbage family along with beets for better yield. Make sure to not plant pole beans in the same garden as beets.
3. Cucumbers – Despite being a fruit, most people treat cucumber as a vegetable. It’s incredibly versatile and can be consumed in all sorts of ways. You can make refreshing cucumber water, eat it raw or pickle it. However, growing large cucumbers isn’t easy. You can fix that by growing cucumbers along with corn. Apart from increasing cucumber yield, corn will also protect your cucumbers from certain viruses. Moreover, cucumber also protects corn from certain ants.
While corn is the best companion plant for cucumbers, you can also grow radishes, dill, lettuce, and beans in the same bed to increase cucumber yield. Make sure to avoid growing potatoes, sage, and other aromatic herbs along with cucumber. That will stunt the growth of cucumbers and lead to a disappointing harvest.
4. Carrots – For carrots, radishes are the best partners. Both plants take different nutrients from the soil and don’t interfere with each other’s growth. Moreover, radishes have a quicker maturing time and don’t grow as deep as carrots. On the other hand, carrots have a higher maturing time and a longer tap root to absorb nutrients from a lower section of the soil. While pairing carrots with radishes bring the best yield, other companion crops bring different benefits.
For instance, when you plant onions along with carrots, the onions repel stubborn pests like carrot flies and help to grow fuller and plump carrots. If you live in a particularly hot climate, you can grow tomatoes along with carrots since they provide shade to the heat-sensitive crop. However, make sure to not grow parsnips, coriander, and dill in the same garden bed as carrots.
5. Broccoli – Broccoli belongs to the cabbage family and you can increase its yield by planting some aromatic crops in the same bed. Pair broccoli with dill, sage, peppermint, chamomile, and rosemary to get a generous harvest at the end of the season. You can also go the extra step and grow a neat row of broccoli and lettuce plants one after the other. Both the plants will benefit from this arrangement and help you secure a healthy dose of greens. On the other hand, plants like strawberries and pole beans don’t go well with broccoli.
6. Asparagus – Asparagus is an underrated plant that can add a lot of flavor to your meaty dishes and also taste good on its own. To maximize asparagus yield, you can plant it along with parsley. Apart from parsley, asparagus also pairs well with tomatoes and basil. Basil shields tomatoes from pests and tomatoes shield asparagus from infesting beetles. However, growing asparagus on the same bed as garlic, onion and potatoes would be a terrible choice.
7. Corn – As mentioned above, corn protects cucumbers from viruses and helps to increase their yield. Similarly, cucumbers grow prickly vines that keep raccoons from nibbling on corn. Apart from cucumbers, you can also grow any other crop that increases nitrogen in the soil. That’s why planting green beans and peas along with corn can help you grow larger crops with a higher nutritional value. However, make sure not to grow tomatoes along with corn since they can’t protect or benefit each other and share a common enemy – the corn earworm.
8. Onions – Members of the onion and cabbage family were meant for each other. Cabbages are aphid-prone vegetables and onions are great at repelling aphids. Moreover, scattering onions across your garden prevents the onion maggot from traveling and infesting all the crops.
9. Peppers – To make peppers grow big and healthy, pair them with basil. Peppers are prone to spider mites, mosquitoes, flies, and aphids. Even if they grow big and large, your harvest would be pitiful if peppers aren’t protected from those pests. The best way to achieve that is to grow peppers near basil. They protect peppers from pests and can also improve the flavor of your colorful peppers. Apart from basil, you can also grow onions and spinach along with peppers. Just make sure to keep beans away from your pepper garden.
Conclusion
As you can see, instead of planting one type of crop, it’s better to add variety to your veggies garden and get some complementing plants. It increases yield, reduces weeds, and also helps increase soil nutrients. If you need topsoil for making new garden beds, you can buy some from a nearby store by searching for “topsoil near me”.
