Companion planting

Companion planting is all about planting things near each other either to encourage better growth/flavour, to repel insects or to attract beneficial insects. There are millions of options out there but in a tiny basic veggie garden these are the ones I've found useful:

Plant marigolds and cordiander near any plants that attract aphids as they will attract ladybirds, the main natural predator of aphids. Sweet alyssum and dill are also meant to be a good one for this but I've not got any yet. My marigolds and coriander have only been out there for about 5 days now and I found my first ladybird yesterday!

Mint, basil, garlic and onions are all pungent and will all repel aphids to an extent and so are useful planted near stone fruit, potatoes, tomatoes and passionfruit in particular.

Basil grown within 2 feet of tomato plants will enhance the flavour of the fruit from those plants.

Because of this, a good tomato bed should include scattered basil, marigolds and garlic.

When it comes to first designing the layout of your veggie garden, this chart is useful as there are some plants that 'like' each other and others that 'hate' each other...

Companion Planting Chart for Vegetables

Vegetable	Really likes to be with…	Really dislikes to be with…
Asparagus	Basil, Tomato, Nasturtium, Parsley	Onion, garlic, potato
Beans	Carrot, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, marigold	Chives, leek, garlic
Broad Beans	Brassicas, carrot, celery, corn, lettuce, potato	Fennel
Beets	Brassicas, lettuce, onion, sage	Bean (pole)
Broccoli	Celery, chamomile, dill, rosemary	Oregano, Strawberry
Brussel Sprouts	Potato, Thyme	Strawberry
Cabbage	Beetroot, potato, oregano, sage	Strawberry, tomato
Carrot	Bush beans, pole beans, lettuce, onion, pea, radish, tomato	Chives, dill, parsnip, radish
Cauliflower	Beans, celery, oregano	Nasturtium, peas, potato, strawberry, tomato
Celery	Cabbage, leek, onion, spinach, tomato	Parsnip, potato
Corn	Bean, cucumber, melon, pea, pumpkin, potato, radish	Tomato
Cucumber	Bean, celery, lettuce, pea, radish	Cauliflower, potato, basil
Eggplant	Bean, capsicum, potato, spinach
Leek	Carrot, celery, strawberry
Lettuce	Carrots, radishes, strawberry	Beans, beetroot, parsley
Melon	Corn, radish	Potato
Onion	Bean sprout, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, strawberry tomato	Bean, pea
Pea	Beans, Carrot, corn, cucumber, radish	Onion family
Potato	Bean, corn, cabbage, pea, eggplant	Cucumber, pumpkin, squash, sunflower
Pumpkin	Corn	Potato
Spinach	Celery, cauliflower, eggplant
Tomato	Asparagus, celery, carrot, parsley, marigold	Corn, fennel, potato
Zucchini	Nasturtium

Thanks to http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com for this info.

Organic pest control

Alrighty, there are a million different versions out there on the internet, but these are the ones that I've modified and stuck with and they seem to work well and not damage the plants. Some are really aimed at control not eradication as I want to keep some bugs around to attract the other beneficial ones.

1. Aphids - crush about 6 cloves of garlic and a hot chili together. Mix this with about 100ml water. Let sit overnight or longer. Strain and keep the 'juice'. This is kept separately and can be kept for up to 6 months and still be useful. Add a tablespoon of this liquid to 500ml water, a table spoon of mineral oil and a few flakes/a single drop of natural soap. Mix well and spray onto BOTH sides of leaves daily for 3-4 days and then as needed (usually about weekly). Some aphids are resistant even to this mix in which case use a stronger soap mix, leave it on the leaves for 45mins before RINSING off (else will damage leaves), then use a garlic/chili spray to deter other aphids. Basically, the soap and oil are contact killers, the garlic and chili are deterrents.
Be aware that some plants are sensitive to soaps - the damage will take about 2 days to appear on leaves so best to test a small patch first if possible.
Another little trick is yellow dishes with soapy (literally a drop of washing up liquid) water in them. The aphids see yellow as a healthy flower and just drown themselves in the dish. be sure to change the water daily and obviously after any rain. This will also trap flies too if they are a nuisance in your yard. Easy.
If it's a small infestation, you can also pick the aphids off. Easily done if you sit with a dish of soapy water and just dip a finger in it each time you see an aphid then touch the aphid - they just stick right to your fingertip! Be sure to check under every leaf, and if you're late on into their attack then check inside every curled leaf too (they damage the leaves so the leaves wrap around and give them a cosy hiding place).
Encourage aphid predators (mainly ladybirds and lacewings here, though hover wasps sometimes make an appearance too). I'll post about this soon.
Also make sure you control any ants around the area (see below) as they actually farm the aphids so if the ants remain the aphids will be a persistent problem.

2. Slugs and snails - there is an organic and eco-/pet-friendly control pellet which is iron EDTA based which you can scatter around if you have huge problems, but I've found a few beer traps work well (you can also use milk, sugar/yeast mixes and other things too but beer works well and is easy).
Bury pots in the ground among the crop that is being targeted by the slugs and snails (usually lettuce). The pots should be about 5cm deep and 5cm diameter. Dig the holes to put the pots in so that the rim of the pot sits about 5mm above the ground (this just makes it easier to lift them out to clean them as needed). Fill at least 3/4 with beer (some say the more expensive the more lure it has to the snails but mine don't seem fussy), and wait. They'll need cleaning out and the beer refreshing every other day. Mine caught a few slugs (and sadly a couple of earthworms) the first week they were out but nothing since and the snails seem to have just gone away which is brilliant. They do have a plant just on the other side of the fence which they love and I've decided to let them keep so maybe they're just happy there.

3. Ants - these need controlling to help control aphids, plus they can do some damage to seedlings too. I reckon these are the easiest thing to control int the garden - cinnamon is the answer, they hate it. Just either scatter ground cinnamon around their nests or shove a cinnamon stick down into their nests, and they're gone!

4. Butterfly / moth caterpillars - these were news to me but this week they have just appeared everywhere...mainly on all my stone fruit trees and the butterfly ones are tying all my carrot seedling leaves into little silken cocoons around themselves! Clever, but annoying, as if left they'll just move on down to the carrot and eat that when they hatch. The moth caterpillars are the ones on the fruit trees, are tiny (about 2mm long) and black with yellow stripes and found eating leaves and buds. You can use the same garlic/chili/soap/oil mix as detailed above against these guys, but I have decided to try an organic caterpillar-specific spray I read about...it's made by Yates and the active ingredient is Dipel (BT) which is a bacteria that, once ingested by the caterpillars, kills them. It's a powder you mix up to 5-10 litres of spray and apply to both sides of the leaves. Takes about 3-4days to work so I'll be garlic spraying in the mean time but at least won't deter or kill any other bugs (I'm very keen on this just now as am still hoping for some ladybirds to move in!)

So, I'll see how it's all looking in the morning, but these tiny bugs are so minuscule they really can sneak up on you! I though all my baby plums were so healthy until this morning when I found the tiny caterpillars happily munching their way through at least 50% of them! Damn organic gardening ;-) but it's all trial and error and seems to be getting easier the more I find out.

Hello fellow veggie growers

Hi,
I am very new to this so bear with me while I get to grips with it :-) Basically, I am a soon-to-be mum who has a few months of peace and quiet left in her life and is enjoying the Australian spring time, putting some TLC into our little courtyard and hoping to get some good organic crops in the process. We have a large garden but that is the playgroud of our 2 very active dogs (a kelpie cross and a saluki cross) so there's no way anything would survive out there. Next to that though is a gated courtyard (in which I have built an outdoor cat run for our 3 cats but the rest is free!...getting to understand the vet side of me, huh?)
Anyway, the courtyard was bare when we moved in a year ago, just a few border plants which were getting pretty much ignored. I LOVE citrus trees and was given a lemon tree as a housewarming gift so this instantly went into a large pot in the courtyard...I couldn't bear to plant my tree in the ground in case we move house (I am a bit of a nomad) so all my precious trees go into pots. So, it started with a eureka lemon tree a year ago...the big pots now include a tangelo tree, tahitian lime, goldmine nectarine, pomegranate, stella cherry (self pollinating), primetime plum (needs cross-pollinator) and santa rosa plum (self pollinating).
This year, we went back to the UK for a close friend's wedding and to visit family (my husband and I are both from the UK, we moved to Australia just 3 years ago), and I was inspired by my friend's tiny vegetable garden which was providing garlic, chillies and potatoes for them. So when we got back and I found myself newly jobless and bored for 9 months (I am a very 'busy' person and was working in a single vet clinic when I happily found I was pregnant and so had to quit that job due to radiation/anaesthetic etc risks) I put my energy into clearing the tiny border flower beds in the courtyard and starting a veggie garden (I'll get some photos on soon, but the whole courtyard space is only about 3mx4m and the beds are only about 30cm deep and only along 2 egdes).

Planted so far: beetroot, potatoes (growing in a dustbin - I'll post how to do this soon), snowpeas, passionfruit, raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, gooseberries, rhubarb, rocket lettuce, iceberg lettuce, herbs (rosemary, basil & coriander- mainly as insect deterents), garlic, red onions, chillies, and carrots.

Seedlings getting ready to go outside: roma and cherry tomatoes, red/green and multicoloured capsicum, cucumber, watermelon. There were more lettuce seedlings but they got too hot and leggy and failed :-(

Problems so far that have needed an organic hand instead of chemicals: aphids (they completely attacked and destroyed this year's nectarine crop while I was away for a weekend!), ants, slugs and snails.

So, I'll post soon about the organic pest control & companion planting used so far and the techniques I've found useful (either by trial and error or by hours and hours of internet research) out there. Hopefully it'll be of some use/interest to some fellow organic gardeners out there - it really does pay to go organic and homegrown, not just for the pleasure and money savings, but the taste of everything you grow is a million times better than anything form the supermarket!