Bring all the Bees to your Veggie Garden with Herbs!
Whether you are planning a vegetable garden or growing in a container on your patio, planting companion herbs in amongst your favourite veggies will not only bring all the bees to your yard (and butterflies, too), it will help protect your plants from disease and make the best use of available garden space.
At Elk Root Conservation’s certified organic not-for-profit educational demonstration farm, orchard, apiary and pollinator gardens, we have grown almost everything in the West Coast Seed catalogue. Our top three companion herb picks to increase pollinator habitat in our market garden and improve pollination of the veggies we grow for vulnerable community members are chamomile, dill, and cilantro.
The best part is these three herbs self-sow the following spring here at ERC in West Kootenay, BC. We just thin out the ‘volunteer’ herbs where we want to plant our veggies and leave the rest to attract pollinators - easy peasy!
Our absolute favorite veggie and herb companion plant pairing is tomato and chamomile. Ahhh, chamomile…we cannot say enough about this herb. It is a good companion to almost every garden plant, but there are certain plants it will really help thrive, like tomatoes. Chamomile’s natural antibacterial and antifungal properties are known to help plants combat fungus, mildew, and blight.
Beneficial insects like hoverflies, beneficial wasps, ladybugs, and honeybees are all attracted to chamomile. At ERC these pollinators enjoy the chamomile blooms in our gardens and in return they help protect our tomatoes from aphids and mites.
Elk Root Chamomile Growing Tip: Keep your chamomile pruned back so it does not get leggy. Leave some of the clippings in the garden to add calcium, magnesium, and potassium to improve garden soil health and to self-sow ‘volunteer’ chamomile plants. Once the pollinators are done with the blooms, pop off the flower heads to dry, and steep to make a relaxing winter tea. When under the weather, add lemon and honey to make a sweet and soothing cold and flu remedy.
Another ERC favourite herb and veggie companion pairing is dill and brassicas, like cabbage. Dill helps repel cabbage moth larvae so that your cabbages are less likely to become a chewed mess. Dill is also highly attractive to swallowtail butterflies. We always plant extra herbs to share with pollinators. Dill will make your garden inviting for female swallowtails to lay their eggs, and you can let the baby caterpillars snack on the dill fronds you don’t use.
Last but not least, we could not live without the benefits of cilantro in ERC’s gardens. Cilantro, like dill, attracts beneficial insects including pollinators. Plant extra dill and cilantro together in your garden and let them bolt to increase their natural pest control.
Elk Root Cilantro Growing Tip: Cilantro does not like to be transplanted so broadcast it directly in the garden. Let it go to seed and help it to resow the following year by broadcasting the seeds in the fall that have dried on the plant. Thin the ‘volunteers’ that pop up the next spring at least 6 inches apart.
Cilantro is a heavy feeder so legumes like sugar snap peas and beans are a great choice to grow alongside cilantro plants because they provide much-needed nitrogen in the soil and some shade.
About Kate Mizenka
Kate is Elk Root Conservation’s Founder and Director of Farm, Orchard & Apiary. She is the creator of the Sustainable Apiary Model and designer of ERC’s Pollinator Demonstration Gardens. Kate is an avid advocate of organic regenerative agriculture, pollinator wellness, environmental education and conservation. She is the creative mind behind ERC’s organic regenerative agriculture research and innovations, with a vision to alleviate food insecurity at the local level in our communities using agricultural practices that go hand-in-hand with environmental conservation.