The Verde Thumbs garden club brings together a large community of garden lovers every month at the Cottonwood Public Library. This month’s meeting on Saturday, March 19, focused on companion planting.
Founded by gardener Janice Montgomery, the club has been meeting for over a decade. “It is one of the best learning experiences a new gardener can have,” Montgomery said. The club’s mission is to teach and share sustainable techniques for growing fruits and vegetables.
Companion planting, or allelopathy, is the study of how plants affect one another when planted in the same vicinity. Montgomery noted that every plant puts something into the soil and takes something out, thereby influencing the development of the other plants around it.
Allelopathy is easily observed, especially in desert plants. Montgomery recalled one desert plant that adapted to release a compound that would not allow the seeds of other plants to germinate near it, preserving its access to water.
A famous example of allelopathy is the “Three Sisters” combination of corn, beans and squash widely used by American Indians. Corn needs lots of nitrogen, which is provided by the nitrogen-fixing beans, while the squash provides shade for the sprouts of the corn and beans.
Conversations at the meeting were wide-ranging, with Montgomery describing it as “amazing to see all of the information sharing among members.”
The importance of studying each individual gardener’s own microbiome was one of the topics under discussion. Seeds are often listed as appropriate for different plant zones based on location, but attendees stressed the importance of gardeners studying their own areas. Differences in temperature and rainfall can affect how plants develop in gardens even a few streets apart.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen, that’s the beauty of gardening,” Montgomery said. She shared a tip for preventing new blossoms from freezing: Wrap a fruit tree in old-fashioned Christmas lights and cover it with a blanket. The lights produce just enough heat to prevent a light frost from killing blossoms.
Deterring insects mostly has to do with fragrance. Aphids don’t like onions or garlic, so gardeners should try planting these near a crop getting eaten by aphids. Corn can be planted in rows with cosmos seed interspersed. The fragrance of the blossoms will deter corn earworms from laying their eggs on the corn silk. Cucumbers can be planted near corn to provide shade.
One attendee asked about expired seeds. Seeds don’t ever really expire, but Montgomery recommended pre-germinating them to see if they are viable, which can be done by placing the seeds in a damp paper towel in a plastic bag.
Montgomery argued passionately for the importance of relearning where food comes from and how it grows.
Random growing tips offered by the club’s members also included:
- Put coffee grounds into topsoil
- Put eggshells into the soil prior to planting tomatoes to provide calcium
- Spraypaint black pots white where the sun hits them
- Put a milk container over tomatoes and cut the bottom off to create a miniature greenhouse
Montgomery said that part of the fun of gardening is getting to experiment and test out what other people say will not work. She has tried various companion planting scenarios to see which plants can and can’t successfully grow next to one another.
The club also maintains a seed library that provides free seeds to the public. It will be open on March 25 at 11:00 a.m. at the Cottonwood Public Library. The next Verde Thumbs meeting will be held on Saturday, April 15, at 10:00 a.m.
