What can Companionable Herbs do to Your Herb Gardening?

Herbs have special qualities that make them your botanical garden aids on your herb gardening, just as they work for you in your medicine chest, in your kitchen, and throughout your home. There is more to discuss about the role of herbs in companion planting, and beyond that, about how herbs can work for you to improve your garden.

Using and growing herbs and plants to repel or destroy insect pests seems to be part of nature’s design. The practical use of herbs in the garden have generally been passed orally from gardener to gardener or through channels supported by people who put more stock in practical results and common sense than in scientific certification. There are many ways herbs can benefit your garden. It is often believed that companion planting is only a method of pest control. Herbs help control insects. And using plants to help control insects and other plant pests is a fundamental part of the lore of organic gardening. There are several ways in which plants figure in pest control. Some plants - a few relatively exotic varieties - consume bugs outright. Others simply repel bugs. Still others are attractive to bugs, enticing them to one spot for easy hand-picking. These practical qualities of the plants can be applied in the garden in a variety of ways. The most familiar is by inter-planting, commonly known as companion planting.

The key to success of the method is to use the right plant. Plants that help control pests tend to have a common characteristic - a strong scent - and this strong scent is the key to their effectiveness. Most repellents do not actually "repel" insects so much as they mask, absorb, or deodorize the attracting scent of the plants being protected. Plants that repel insects usually have a strong, sharp taste as well, but it’s the potent smell that confuses the pests, thus protecting companion crops that might otherwise be subject to attack.

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