Took the minerns lettuce out now. Too late maybe. It seems to have killed some smaller bulbils of Égyptian walking onion.
I used it elsewhere as mulch. Full of seeds. Great!
This is what miner’s lettuce root system looks like. Quite a carpet. Nothing van sprout in there.
I’ve used the miner’s lettuce to mulch the potatoes
Wow, that’s quite a root system!
Do you think it killed the walking onions because of allelopathy, or just because the roots made it impenetrable to tiny bulbils sprouting? If miner’s lettuce doesn’t play nicely with alliums, I’d want to know that so I don’t sow garlic with them.
No i’m sure it’s chemically OK. It shaded the small ones out too much. I think that root carpet kills germinating weeds. It forms quite late in the development, that carpet.
Okay, so it may be very effective against bindweed, while not causing any issues at all for perennials that put forth shoots in early spring. Sounds like a great groundcover, then! 
I hope it will do it for your sandy soil type as well… I thought bindweed roots come from the center of the earth.
(Snickers.) Yes, that would explain a lot! They must reach all the way down to the Earth’s molten iron core!
Your bindweed is having a party down there with my nettles.
I’m fairly sure the last gardener in my plot was either a masochist or insane and PLANTED (or at the very least embraced and encouraged) prickly wild nettles in a patch of the perennial/herb/medicinal border directly outside the wildlife fence. These arent piddly little seedling nettles.
The wildlife fence has chicken wire sunk 2 ft down into the ground and the nettles evil rhizomaceous roots work their way through so they cannot be pulled, and keep popping up in my beds on the other side. Like, I get that these things are a nutritious perennial edible and all…but just take 10 steps further and forage them by the creek outside the garden. Ugh.
. . . Ouch.
I know there are people who plant nettles on purpose as a nutritious perennial vegetable. Generally people who really like the taste of nettles. Which is great! But I will say that I’m very grateful I didn’t inherit a yard full of them. (And I have no plans to plant those on purpose.)
One day I will gather up the will to make nettle soup. I can well imagine it will be very up my alley. My interest in nettles is very much dampened right now by their sneak attacks at harvest time, popping up in beds where Im growing other things.
They’re far from rare in the hyperlocal sense - literally this backyard backs onto a creek that is lined with them. So I dont see any reason why I should ever plant them deliberately, no matter how delicious and nutritious they might be
Yes, that makes perfect sense! Why plant something prickly in your yard on purpose, even if it’s edible, when you can easily forage it nearby in a place that won’t stab you with thorns when you’re trying to harvest the things you planted on purpose?
Great post and pics! There’s a children’s song that goes…
“The more we get together the happier we’ll be cause
my friends are your friends” and all that jazz…
When I think of companion planting, the inground space I have, the cost of the seed (Free!) I try to just make a habit of getting 'er in! Whatever I can cram in there I’ll totally do it. There’s so much I want to grow.
I could fill miles upon miles.
Rules in regards to companion planting? I don’t quite know. There seems to be exceptions so I try to not focus too much on it. Maybe I should but I really don’t have the space to keep anything truly seperate. One of the many reasons I adore the freedom and self sufficiency the Landrace gardening mindset offers!
I do have peas growing with garlic and the one that is really close does have a little bit of a weaker vibe. I’ll have to keep an eye on it. Maybe excess sulfur is used by other plants in the area and balanced out? Interesting to take note of. I’ll have to watch it.
The things I take into consideration -
Keeping the ground covered and full of life suited to the corresponding season
Height. I try to think in terms of layers and vertical space instead of a horizontal plane.
Most importantly plants that are delicious and useful for us and our pollinator friends!
Companion planting allows me to accomplish all of these growing aspects in order to make the most use of my space and the seasons.
Real Time Pic May 12th Zone 6A
Garlic cloves,Garlic bulbils, Garlic chives, Lettuce, hundreds of tomatoes to climb the trellis, Licorice mint, Flax, Sweet peppers. Onions, Rue, Sage, Echinacea, Walking Onions, Prarie Coneflower,etc
It’s fun to see photos from other growers that allow their plants to play together too!
I’m noticing an interesting trend with garlic and peas. The peas that are about a foot or more away from a garlic plant seem to be okay. It’s the ones that are any closer that do poorly.
So, I mean, it’s possible to make them a polyculture. You just probably want to have a non-legume to fill the gaps between garlic and peas, or else plan to have big gaps. Which would be a completely reasonable thing to do if, say, you have a lot of space and want wide gaps so that you don’t have to irrigate. Wide spacing is great for drought tolerance; it just isn’t great for a small growing space.
Ive planted peas with a trellis then carrots abot 8 inches away from peas, then spinach 8 inches from the carrots. All grow happily and the shade from the carrots tops helps keep the ground from drying out and cooler. Peas do dislike garlic and onions, alliums do best with tomatoes and peppers. “Mary’s Garden” who sells heirloom seeds has quite a lot of information on her website concerning companion planting, so does The Old Farmers Almanac. I printed the two page chart, added notes, placed in a plastic protector sleeve and carry with me everytime I plant seeds. Yes, kinda like a pocket protector for the garden. 
Years ago I had a companion book for vegetables the name of it is was or is carrots love tomatoes
When I was younger there was a book on companion planning named carrots love tomatoes (or vice versa)
(Laugh.) In one of Carol Deppe’s books, she wrote a rather hilarious rebuttal to that particular pair, based on her experience trying to grow them together. She finished by saying something like, “I’m still not sure if carrots love tomatoes. All I know is that when I try to grow them together, I hate them both.”
So far, I can report that bush green beans are not a good companion crop for bush zucchinis, because those ginormous leaves shade them out, and you don’t get many pods. A little judicious pruning, cutting back the one or two leaves that are causing the problem for the bean plants, would probably solve that just fine without reducing squash yield much, though.
I’m wondering if peas can use young fruit trees as trellises. It seems to me that peas don’t really wrap around things, they just clutch with tendrils in order to stay balanced upright, so they may not add much weight to the tree. I’d be more concerned about the pea leaves possibly shading out the young fruit tree’s leaves. That is something I could easily see happening, and it’s important to be nice to young trees.
I grew runner beans on ~5 ft apples last year. They didn’t seem to hurt the trees much, if at all.
Woo hoo! That’s great news!
I grew scarlet runner beans up young apple trees, no problems.
Thank you! I’m delighted to hear that!
