Sweet Alyssum: The Companion Plant You're Probably Not Growing

There's a plant that I added to my garden last year that will never not have a place in my garden. And no, it is not our garden mascot Babka who's eyeing the plant I'm talking about. In fact, it is this beautiful purple and white plant right here called alyssum. So what is the story behind this plant? Why is it always going to have a home in my garden? Well, first of all it is alyssum or sweet alyssum or Lobularia maritimia, something like that in the Latin, which means small pod and marine. So it's harkening back to really where this plant grows in its native habitat, which is the Mediterranean, sort of on sandy beaches. You can see these tufts, usually white. This is sort of a purple variety kind of just spreading all around that area. And that kind of goes to the first thing you need to know about alyssum is anytime you're planting plants in your garden, you do have to know where they came from. First of all, that gives you a clue to its care. Remember a while back, we did a video on Italian herbs. Well, that's in the Mediterranean and that climate is going to be the thing you have to provide it. So it will be the same for alyssum. But there is another important note and it's that you want to grow plants ideally that are not considered super invasive in your area. Alyssum actually in California can be considered invasive. So when you're growing a plant like this, you really want to take care to manage its spread. I have it in one small corner of one raised bed and we have a pretty hefty dose of woodchip mulch here on the ground. I'm not super worried about this spreading, but if you were to plant it in like a curb strip, it might just get all over the place. And that is something to consider when growing alyssum. Alyssum is in the brassica family, which means it is a cousin of your broccolis, cabbages, cauliflowers, things like that. But first of all, it looks very different. And second of all, it smells very different. The smell is probably one of the sweetest, most honey-like scents you'll ever have in the garden. Just that quick scent right there. It's so, so pleasant. And in fact, that is part of the reason why this plant is so good for bringing in different beneficial insects into your garden. There are some varieties of alyssum I think you will really enjoy in your garden. It's not just this beautiful white one that you see right here, very tight and sort of clustered, although that's a great variety. That's more of the standard. The first one I want to profile is one called Dwarf Pink Alyssum from San Diego Seed Company. And I'm very proud to say we actually now offer some seeds on the Epic Gardening Store. So you can actually get that one directly from us. Next up, if you can find it, there's one called Snow Princess from Proven Winners. It is a sterile hybrid. So it's sort of bred mostly for its beauty and for its look. And also if it is sterile, it is not going to produce seeds that will spread all over the garden. So it could be a good addition if you don't want it to go all over the place. The next one, if you can't decide on a color, is Allure Pastel Blend. So it's not just one variety, but it's a mix of about five or six different colors. And if you scatter so that across a bed, much like this one here, this is mint, but you get the idea, you can get a really nice color blend. If you want a taller variety, I mean, Noelissum's getting absolutely huge, but this one gets to about 10 inches tall. It's called Easter Bonnet. It has three different colors, white, pink, and red. And it's just a really good larger plant that you can plant to get a little bit more visual height intrigue in the garden. A really interesting one is Royal Carpet. It has these really vibrant purple and lavender flowers to it, but it spreads far but not tall. So about three inches tall, but it'll go about 10 inches wide. So if you want more of a ground cover style that has a beautiful, beautiful tapestry of color, then Royal Carpet might be for you. Noelissum has such an attractive effect on a lot of the beneficials that we really want in our garden. So I'll go over just a few for you here. Pirate bugs are going to eat aphids. You've got your brackenid wasps or your parasitic wasps. Those are the wasps that typically will lay their eggs in the larva of other pests like the tomato hornworm. You'll see these white little tufted sort of poofy looking things coming out of the back of a tomato hornworm larva. And it is a good thing. It sounds weird, but it's a good thing. You actually want to leave your tomato hornworms that look like that because they are now a vector for more parasitic wasps that will control the hornworm for you. So that's an interesting thing about Noelissum. It brings those in. It also brings in hoverflies. I, in fact, it's hard to see, but they are actually hovering around this garden right now. And the larva of hoverflies also attract aphids. So even if it didn't smell great and it didn't even look good, it has such a beneficial attractant effect that it would still have a place in my garden. Now let's talk about how to care for Noelissum including starting seeds. Well, it's really easy to start. You can actually just surface sow it along a bed and it will readily self seed. And there's enough of the seeds that you don't have to worry about babying every single seed. Or like us, you can start in a seed starting system and then transplant in. It gives you a little more flexibility to kind of slot it into the exact section of the garden that you want, but it readily will self seed, like I mentioned, which is why it can be invasive in some areas. As far as sun, take a look at where we are. We're in the front of my yard here. I'm blocking the light a little bit, but this is the very tail end of the day light coming in. It does get a little bit of shade throughout the day here. And that's kind of what you want to give it. Full sun to partial shade, especially during the hottest times of the year, it is going to like that. It can tolerate and it will be able to come back if it does die back in the peak of the summer. Because like I said, it's self sowing so much, it'll come back and revive itself in the fall and sometimes even the winter. But if you want to make sure it actually stays throughout the summer, you can put it in an area that does get a little bit of shade. Now another thing to think about is it's a Mediterranean style plant, so it wants a bit of consistent moisture but can handle drought much like some of the other Mediterranean plants, oregano, thyme, things like that. But if you really want it to look nice and pretty, well, this is actually at a great point. It looks incredible at this very moment. But what will start to happen, I'll take a stem off to show you, is you're going to get the flowers only showing up at the perimeter of the plant, at the tail end of each stem. And as the plant gets large enough, that can actually create sort of a dead zone in the middle here and it kind of looks floppy and goes out this way. So something that you can do instead of individually deadheading, like let's say this was spent right here and I wanted to come through and do a classic deadhead, I would just remove this one piece and let the rest of this grow. Because it's such sort of a bunching, clumping style plant, you can actually just kind of take it like this and just cut it back with shears and you're in a good spot. I learned a lot about alyssum from Jacques, who is our resident garden hermit here at Epic Gardening. So he's got a couple of little fun facts about it. I'm going to let him share with you right now. Alyssum is actually a very drought tolerant plant. And while it may not seem like it is, what happens here is that it will dry back and look a little bit wilty when it's dried out too much. But if you come by and you give it some water, it will actually perk up over time. So if you notice that your alyssum is looking very droopy and the flowers are looking very small and receded, make sure that you come by and give it some extra water and it'll definitely perk up. And one of the great things about alyssum is that it actually has many different uses. And so let's take a look at a plant right over here. It looks a lot healthier than this one over here. So over here, you can see it's another alyssum plant, but it looks a lot more vibrant and the flowers look much fuller. So this is an example of one that has been well watered. And actually what you see is that I have a bunch of alyssum planted here specifically next to my chickens because they go absolutely crazy for it. So if you watch, if you watch this, it's automatically a chicken magnet. They will go absolutely nuts for it. So we've decided to grow it right next to our chicken fence. That way they could always forage it as it keeps growing and help prune it for us. So Jacques had some great tips for us and I've got a couple more for you on planting strategies. This one in front of you is probably our favorite use case for alyssum. You can see I have some determinate bush tomatoes here. There's a little bit of basil, but what you'll notice is as a corner or border plant, it's a great use case. You get this trailing effect, you get an attractant effect like we've talked about, and they're going to be attracted to this because they can smell and see the color. If it was buried in the middle, they really wouldn't see that. But on top of that, we've already talked about how powerful these beneficial insects are. And for a plant like tomatoes, why not bring in the parasitic wasps right next to the plant where their prey is going to be, these tomato hornworms. So for us using it as a strategic companion plant to combat things that typically get a lot of pests is one of our best use cases. Now there's one more thing. It is actually edible. It is in the brassica family. You can just straight up eat this entire head and sort of has like a crest feeling to it. I wouldn't say it's my favorite thing. It definitely has a bit of a mustard vibe. I don't really eat it. Like Jacques said, the chickens love it. I'm not a big fan, but your garden is going to be better off most likely if you let it flower and do the job it's supposed to do. So with that said, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.