When it comes to organic gardening, you want the best of both worlds. You want healthy, bug free plants without resorting to toxins or pesticides. However, garden pests don’t always cooperate. One great organic solution is to plant companion plants. These plants can help to ward off bugs and make the plants you love grow bigger and stronger. Here are some examples:

Plant Catnip with Collard Greens

Catnip helps prevent flea-beetle damage on the collards.

Surround Broccoli and Potatoes with Sweet Alyssum

This quick to spread, fragrant, low-growing, flowering plant is a member of the mustard family, with a taste similar to horseradish. It also attracts beneficial insects to protect your broccoli and potatoes, and you can eat it.

 Protect Spinach with Radishes

Planting radishes near your spinach helps to keep leaf miners away from delicate spinach leaves and allows the radishes to grow unharmed underground.

Let Corn be Your Beanstalks

Allow beans to grow up the tall corn stalks and you will help protect the corn from predators. Bean plants draw in beneficial insects that eat the bugs that love corn.

Grow Cabbage with Thyme, Dill, and Tomatoes

Thyme repels cabbage worm, while dill attracts cabbageworm predators. Cabbage helps dill grow strong and upright. Tomatoes also repel diamondback moth larva that likes to chew on cabbage leaves.

Defend Carrots or Beans with Rosemary

Rosemary is not only a tasty herb, it also repels bean beetles and carrot flies.

Save Your Roses with Garlic

Plant garlic alongside your roses to ward off bugs.

Plant a Border of Marigolds and Wormwood

Marigolds repel a variety of bugs, including nematodes that attack the roots of your melons. Wormwood repels animals like deer and rabbits as well as white flies. Together they make a great border to help keep your organic garden pest free.

Plant smart and keep your garden healthy.