Favourite companion planting combinations

1)
Borage (green fuzzy leaved herb with tiny star like blue flowers, pretty, and tastes good)
Tomatoes

2)
This is an example of intercropping taking advantage of undersoil and oversoil space; and companion planting.
Carrots with Tomatoes. The Carrots take up the undersoil space, the tomatoes vine onto the posted stakes. With this I add some flowers and herbs, say Zinnias (tall) and nasturtiums (vines, hanging low, look nice if in a raised container), and marigold.

3)
The Three Sisters: Beans, Squash, Corn.
Long string beans, yellow patty pan squash and a tiny orange pumpkin variety, a tall white or yellow corn variety. Various herbs and a few flowers, such as white borage, and French marigold. One garlic or chive plant.

4)
Cucumber and tansy and/or rose geranium.

5)
Rosemary and carrot.

6)
Okra, interplanted with peppers and beans, also take advantage of available undersoil and oversoil space, and the lower plants will benefit from shade in hotter sunny climates. That´s not such a problem here, so here in Norway in my area, I would not plant these together, as I´d rather all plants get as much of the sun as possible, as it isn´t always sunny and hot during the growing season. It really depends. Sometimes within a season I might change or transplant something elsewhere, according to how things are going. Not everything can be easily transplanted of course, so don´t try this with taprooted plants, or easily killed plants that die if disturbed much. Smaller things such as herbs, or if something is planted in a moveable container is helpful when doing this. To change things around easily. Most things can be planted in pots, and my garden is not so huge, like my stepdads with a few acres planted usually. His climate is totally different, long, extremely hot and sunny and humid, so his plan is done before he starts planting and plowing. My "field" is small, so I do everything by hand, not with a Massey Ferguson,)

Work with what you´ve got. I´m not so amazing with gardening that I would appreciate gardening on a huge endless plot with machines. I´m a bit more towards the smaller end of that, or enjoying helping out with smaller things in the huge plots, such as watering, picking, cooking, canning, sharing:). And taking photos of course!

Or, simply dragging my deck chair to an empty space, and sharing the views with the fireants hoping I´ve not disturbed them or the wasps and bees flying about on the really super hot hours. At night, watching the glowing fireflies everywhere, is magical against the starry black twinkly sky, listening to the dogs barking, or the crickets chirping everywhere. Each garden site is different, enjoy yours as you can:).

Every garden I´ve had has been different, especially by location. Each has its own difficulties (say, fire ants), and its rewards (endlessly easy growth, huge tall full basils and wild sunflower shrubs popping up from out of nowhere!), to no fireants but lots of wasps (as here) and short season necessitating often getting plants from the local farmer when my own haven´t taken, and having to seriously plan everything as per the exact microclimate and warm to hot with cold nights weather here.

Watermelon so far has been my bane, not really working out well at all. But will try again this year. Failing that, the local shops have started selling watermelon briefly. So much so, the novelty still new, has sprouted, to me, bizarre cooking suggestions of grilling watermelon slices. ick EEKK poor watermelon! AHH what a good waste of watermelon! but then maybe the watermelon is not as good, sweet, juicy as it should be, so grilling it brings something flavourful to it. Who knows, but I am not one who will be grilling my watermelon, store bought or not. It´s in my mind, only to be ice cold, eaten by hand, outdoors, in the garden, after freshly picked and cut! haha. Or, after stuffing the fridge inside, and outside in the shed the extra fridge, to capacity when suddenly 20 watermelon all come ripe on the same day, and everyone else within a day´s radius is also trying to share (get rid of) theirs too! haha also.

Watermelon. My insane garden desire here,)