Bugs or Tiny Harvest 8 Plant Combos You Should NEVER Grow Together

You tried everything. You sprayed, you used neem oil, picked everything off by hand and no matter what you did the bugs always came back. Your harvest was always came up too small and you never figured out why. But what if the problem was never what you were doing? What if it was something you planted right next to each other? Today I'm going to show you the combinations that are either inviting pests or quietly shrinking your harvest all season long and what to do if you already have them in ground. Come on. So I have these potatoes but I don't have any more room in the garden for them. This bed might be the perfect spot. Look all these tomatoes. It has to work. I have tomato, potatoes, they rhyme. Like why not? The first pair is tomatoes and potatoes. You get early blight, late blight and a handful of soil borne problems that move through the family fast. Plant them next to each other and you are building a bridge. If one plant gets hit the other plant is right there waiting. Just make sure you go. Oh my goodness. It is love bug season and I am doing my best. So you guys have to bear with me. They're everywhere out here. So if they're already in the ground together you cannot undo the proximity but you can be aggressive about airflow. So remove the effective leaves the moment you see them and do not compost them. Just make sure you go into the next season. Put them in completely separate beds. So the next one is brassicas packed together. Planting all your brassicas in one bed. Oh it feels like you're organized and you like to see them all. It's easier to fertilize. It's easier to water. I get it. I have done it and probably still doing it. I'm not gonna lie. It's actually a pest magnet. Cabbage moss, aphids, cabbage worms find their target by smell. A bed full of nothing but kale, collards, broccoli and cabbage sends the signal loud and wide that we are here and we are ready. If one plant draws that pest in every other brassica in that bed is right there and ready to get hit. So you are concentrating that target and making the pest job so much easier. So if this is your current situation, your current setup, you don't have to rip everything out. Just start breaking it up with companions so you can tuck some chives together in that bed on the base of the plant. Add a few pots of mint on the edge. Remember I said pot. Don't put mint in your beds. Rosemary at the end of your beds. You are scrambling that signal without starting over and you're helping confuse the smell. This next one is tomatoes and fennel. Fennel looks harmless. That is your problem. Fennel releases a compound from its roots that actively inhibits the growth of plants around it. So tomatoes are one of the most sensitive crops to it. You're going to see not a dramatic death. That's not what tomatoes do. They're going to slowly die or give you a smaller looking tomato. They'll be a little less productive than everything in the bed or what you're used to seeing and you'll spend the whole season trying to figure out why. If they're already in the ground together, just pull the fennel. Don't try to work around it. Fennel does not play well with other vegetables at all. It's better off on its own container, on its own space, three feet away from anything you actually care about. Tomatoes will recover once the competition is gone. And the same goes for peppers. Fennel does the same damage there. So if you have fennel anywhere near your pepper, move them now. So if you're finding this helpful, make sure you hit that subscribe button. I put out videos once a week so you don't have to go out in your garden guessing alone. So stick around to the end. I am giving you some rules that's going to help you catch these mistakes before they even happen. I'm gonna need y'all to bear with me because this is, there's a lot of love bugs out here and they are working my nerves. Anyway, number four is dill and carrots. This one shows up in companion plant guides as a good pair and it's only half true. Young dill and carrots do fine together. The problem is the mature dill. When dill goes to flower, it produces a compound that interferes with carrot development and can cause cross-pollination issues that weakens the carrot crop. You plant them together and the dill starts thriving and right when everything looks good, it starts working against you. So if they're already in the ground together, if the dill is still young, you are fine. Just watch it. The moment it starts to bolt and go to flower, pull it or move it into another bed. Dill does its best work around tomatoes and peppers anyway. That is where it belongs. These onions are about to be ready soon, so I'm gonna pull them out anyway. So I might as well put some beans right over here. Let me see. Oh, I don't think that's the best idea. Let me hold off on that. I'm not gonna put the beans right there. I'm gonna tell you why. So the next one is onions and beans. Onions are a great companion for a lot of things. Believe me, I throw onions wherever I have a spot or free area. Beans are not one of them. The sulfur compound onion releases in the soil will inhibit the growth of your beans and peas specifically. Beans are a nitrogen fixer. Part of their value in the garden is what they put back in the soil. Plant onions right next to them and that whole process gets disturbed. The bean produces less and you lose the soil benefit you were counting on. So if they're already in the ground together, if beans are young, you relocate the onions. If both are established and you are mid-season, leave them and just do not repeat the combination next season. Just rearrange before next planting. So keep all of your looms, your onions, your garlics, your chives away from any legumes, different beds entirely. So if this video already has explained some mystery in your garden, please leave a comment. I would love to know. So number five is onions and potatoes. So onions do not just pick on beans. I'm telling you, they have a completely different issue with potatoes. And this one also starts in your kitchen. So if you have watched this channel, you already know not to store your onions with your potatoes. So the reason is the gas that the onion release makes potatoes sprout early. So that's the same chemistry that's happening underground. They compete for the same nutrients and the relationship between the root system suppresses potato development. You'll get smaller tubers, smaller growth, and weaker plants. So if you're already doing this in the kitchen, I'm going to need you to go ahead and move that same concept to your garden. If potatoes are already sizing up, you want to leave them and just have them in separate beds next round. The damage is already done for the season, but you can fix it going forward. Number seven is cucumbers and sage. Real quick before this one, I just need you to walk your garden in your head right now. And if you already found a pair on this list, drop it in the comments. I want to know which one is catching the most people. So sage is a great companion plant for a lot of crops. Cucumbers are not one of them. Sage inhibits cucumber growth and the combination tends to produce a weaker plant with less fruit. Cucumbers do better with nasturtiums, marigold, radish, those plants nearby. Keep the sage with your brassicas and your beans where it actually does its job and give your cucumbers neighbors that help them instead of competing with them. So if they're already in the ground together, cucumbers grow fast enough that if you move the sage early, you can still salvage a good harvest. If they're both established, just note it for next season, the damage is already done. Sorry. So this next one is something that I probably just did. Look at this spot right here in my strawberry bed. I'm just going to go ahead and put it right in here. I mean, I don't think that's going to be a problem because strawberries and cabbage should be okay. Strawberries and brassicas. I love to tuck strawberries wherever I find space because my kids love strawberries. But putting those two together, they're competing hard for the same nutrients and brassicas tend to win. Strawberries near cabbage or broccoli or collards are going to be smaller. They're going to produce less fruit and work harder than they should. Strawberries actually do very well near your beans, your spinach, or lettuce. When you plant them, they do not compete with each other. In cases of beans, it's actually improving the soil around them. So you can move your strawberries away from any of your brassica beds and watch what happens. This season is the first year I actually have a full strawberry bed and I tucked in some garlic nearby and they are doing great. Number nine. So this one is for anyone who has a black walnut tree on their property or nearby. And in Florida, that is way more common than most people realize. Black walnut tree, it produces a compound called juglone from their roots, their leaves, and the shells. Juglone is toxic to a wide range of vegetables. Tomatoes are the most sensitive and would decline and die if planted within the drip zone of a black walnut. Peppers and eggplants are also affected. So if you have a bed that's just never performed, no matter what you did, no matter what you tried to amend with, and there's a black walnut tree nearby, that tree is your answer. The root zone can extend well beyond where the branches reach. The safe distance is farther than most people think. So if this is your situation, the only real fix is to move your growing space outside of the root zone entirety or just grow them in raised beds or something elevated above ground. You cannot amend your way out of juglone. It has to be a physical distance. Now that you have seen the list, here's how to remember it without memorizing every single pair. Same family, same enemy. Tomatoes and potatoes, brassicas packed together. When plants are related, they share the same pests and the same disease. So if you group them together, you are grouping the problems with them. So some plants poison ground around them like fennel, black walnut. They are not just competing with what is nearby, they are actively working against it. Those plants need their own space no matter what else is going on in the garden. So keep those in your head and if you can't remember, you can always come back to this video and re-watch it. So I need you to go outside, walk your garden, and take a look at what's planting next to each other. You might find one thing you can actually move and it will change everything in how that bed performs for the rest of the season. And if you're not sure what does work well together, that is exactly why I put together a free guide. It's specific pairings, what to keep apart, laid out so you can plant before you plant and stop throwing seeds and hoping for the best. So go ahead and grab it off of rootedinjays.com. The book is there too if you want to go deeper. If you want to learn about 50 plus plants that actually do well in Florida, I put a book together and you can catch it right on the website rootedinjays.com. I also wanted to say this, tomatoes and potatoes, they both end with toes. So neither of them need to be next to each other. So if that's the one thing you got from this video, your garden will thank you. Until next time, I am Toni. Thanks for watching. Bye!