Beginner Gardener Reacts to Next Level Gardening | 5 Best Companion Plants for Tomatoes

Next Level Gardening gives some great tips for planting tomatoes! Watch me – a beginner gardener – react to 5 Best Companion Plants for Tomatoes for Maximum Yields and Healthy Plants & 2 Plants Tomatoes Hate.

#gardening #organicgardening #beginner #react #gardens #vegetables #fruit #plants #farm #basil #tomatoes #planting #companionplants #mistakes #novice #raisedbed #produce #spring #organic #homestead

Check out Next Level Gardening’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqG7BAfJQWA&list=WL&index=24&t=10s

Hey guys I am a beginner Gardener and today I’m going to be reacting to a video by Next Level gardening titled five best companion plants for tomatoes for maximum yields and healthy plants and two plants Tomatoes hate that is an oddly specific title but I am excited to

Hear what this video has to offer hey guys it’s Brian with California Garden TV and Welcome to our first ever tomato Tuesday in today’s video we’re going to talk about five plants companion plants for tomatoes and why they’re so beneficial for healthier plants we’re also going to go over the two plants you

Should never grow with tomatoes that’s all coming just wanted to start off the video real quick with an update on my tomato plants they’re in the Solo cups and I’m just getting ready to add the next layer of soil I’ve seen a lot of people use solo cups for starting their

Tomato plants which I think is a very budget friendly way or for my plants I’m currently using basically whatever materials I have lying around uh yogurt containers are very useful as are the bottoms of melt jugs for starting seedlings so any container you can get your hands on and just make sure you

Poke a lot of holes in the bottom for good drainage it works great way you don’t have to buy some expensive seed trays especially if you’re just starting out I’m just getting ready to add the next layer of soil there are two extreme thing about tomatoes and why and I’m assuming why he

Said getting ready to add the next layer of soil is they’re really easy to plant deeper because all the tiny hairs on their stem I have been told turn into Roots if you plant them in the soil so even if your tomato plants have gotten a little tall a little leggy when you

Plant them out in your garden or transplant them into another pot you can just plant the stem really deep so you will have a stronger tomato plant when the subject of companion planting comes up one side is the mystical magical view that um certain plants are just really

Good friends and they help each other to grow bigger better stronger more fruit and then there’s the other camp on the other end of the spectrum that believes in 100% science and if there is not 10 double blind studies to back up that hypothesis then it doesn’t exist

I’m somewhere in the middle and I hope you are too I do believe that there are plants when combined uh or when planted in proximity to Tomato I am also interested in companion planting I tried some of it last year and it seemed to to be helpful especially putting herbs

Around a lot of my leafy greens that would otherwise be eaten up by insects it it seemed to help keep the pests away or even just using the oils of those herbs around the plants if you don’t have that many herb plants I also put basil and next to my tomatoes and I

Think that is the reason they tasted amazing because basil is reportedly supposed to help tomatoes taste better and planting flowers around your plants attracts pollinators and it also attracts pests to the flowers that would otherwise get on your plants so I am all for companion planting those and other

Plants do help that plant uh grow Stronger by providing it protection from certain pests I also think there are methods that have been passed down through generation that is another thing like nobody is going to supply the funding especially if there’s Not dollar sign benefits to test all these companion

Plants the money and potential for making money off of it just isn’t there when they’ve when they’ve got all these pesticides and herbicides that they use instead there are so many possibilities for companion plants that there’s not going to be 10 different studies on whether or not each plant works with

Another plant sometimes you really have to do your own experiments or rely on a knowledgeable Gardener or family that has been gardening for generations and has seen the results of some of these companion plants that work and they don’t have to have uh you know five double blind

Studies to prove to me that they were let’s get into number five and that is maragal there are very few plants that produce a substance that is toxic to nematodes specifically root not nematodes root notot nematodes are microscopic round worms that live in the soil and on plant roots they injure

Plants by feeding on the root cells with their needle-like mouth parts then as a pest I had not heard about before since I am a beginner Gardener I don’t have knowledge yet on all the possible pests or nor will I probably ever have knowledge on all the pests that can get

In a garden but that is good to know and it looks like hard to tell because it it’s killing your plant side on seed The Roots may have uh knots or swollen areas but the effect of the marold may not be only because of the natural nematicides

In it nematodes may enter the root system get trapped and not be able to continue their life cycle but the nematode may actually actively be killed on the plant when the nematode I have thought about getting some Mar Golds I mean they look really pretty for

The garden number four is members of the alium family like onions garlic and chives now according to Cornell University’s home Garden website members of the Alien Family actually put off such an odor that it does repel pests especially red spider I am going to try to intersperse some of

The onions that I have started this year throughout my garden so that while they’re growing they can act as a potential Pest Control too out of your leaves and the Damage appears as many shiny pale yellow marks on the top of the tomato leaf eventually the leaves

Turn brown and die or fall off now if untreated it can lead to a very severe issue with actually the formation of webs on the plant now luckily for me last year when I planted Tomatoes I did not have any pest problems whatsoever not even the notorious tomato worms I did plant basil

And parsley around the tomato plants so those herbs may have prevented them also the fact that I had never grown tomatoes there before so the pests hadn’t been previously attracted to that area but I had no issues whatsoever maybe different this year but nothing ate the leaves

Nothing ate the tomatoes it was great but if you prune them like I do it actually removes a lot of the lower leaves and branches which allows plenty of room underneath tomatoes to plant members of the alium family now garlic it’s a little late when you’re getting tomatoes in the ground garlic should

Have already been planted um you can plant garlic beforehand and then plant the tomatoes around it but right now is the perfect time to plant onions and chives and so those will be perfect planted yeah I planted my garlic in November I’ll have to see how it turns

Out I planted some organic garlic from the store I was not sure if it was going to come up but the snow melted and it’s all shooting up where I planted it so I’m excited to see the results of that it may not produce the biggest garlic

Bulbs but I’ll see if that works out and that’s great because looking into seed garlic or Garden garlic that you actually buy from a seed website that stuff is really expensive so if I can get by by now using the results of garlic that I bought from the store that will be

Great number three is peppermint the strong smell of peppermint is known to repel a lot of uh unsavory and damaging insects I I’m most interested in its ability to repel rodents now you guys if you’ve been watching my channel any link oh peppermint I don’t know I’m sure he

Might mention this if once I continue watching but peppermint is amazing at in my opinion at repelling pest I have uh sprayed peppermint oil around my plants before but if you have a peppermint plant I take this advice from my grandma keep it in a pot keep keep an eye on it

Because she once planted back in her day one peppermint plant and growing up her yard was just all peppermint it took over everything so the peppermint kind of acted as grass for her yard it was everywhere I mean it was nice you could just pick a leaf and kind of chew on it

To get that peppermint flavor but it takes over everything so be very careful if you plant peppermint I bet she didn’t have much of a pest problem in her yard time you know that I have a rodent issue and rodents are my big big Nemesis in the garden and last year after I

Mentioned that for the first time I got a lot of you you viewers telling me about peppermint and so this year I’m actually going to be taking some peppermint cuting and planting them uh in pots through out my tomato bed now one word of warning to uh mint is very all kinds

Of mint are very invasive and so you want to make sure they’re going to be planted in a pot and they’re actually so invasive you want to put that pot not directly on the soil you want to put like a stepping stone or a brick underneath it so that the roots don’t

Escape through the drainage holes and uh take over your bed number two is parsley now parsley is used in a ton of cooking recipes but parsley is actually a really really good companion plant for almost every Garden plant the reason is it has the ability to attract

Hoverflies but you have to let it go to flour and it will do that this summer parsley flowers attract hoverfly the larvae of which will eat aphids thrip uh and other harmful insects some harmful beetles are oh that’s great because I have some parsley in my garden that

Should flower this year since it’s a bial also repelled by the presence of parsley as a side note swallow tail butterflies lay their eggs on parsley leaves as well and they will bring a whole new generation of butterflies to grow up in your garden now my favorite

Companion plant for tomatoes comes in at number one and it absolutely has to be basil now just the smell of yes basil basil and tomatoes growing together in the garden that says summer to me and that’s good enough reason to plant them together right there but basil is also

Said to um repel tomato horn worm that is probably why I didn’t get tomato worms or the proper name tomato horn worms on my plants because they were just surrounded with basil another reason to grow basil other than the great pesto is for the flowers bees absolutely love basil

Flowers now the problem with that is as soon as basil flowers the leaves become bitter and so I grow two types of basil I grow uh Green Basil which I keep pinched throughout the summer uh to keep the keep it from blooming so it never gets bitter until the very end when I

Let it go you know in hi had to keep my basil last year pinched a lot because I it was so good in the recipes I was cooking and I didn’t want the leaves to get bitter so I kept cutting it down so it did not

Flour all and then I grow purple basil and this I let go to flour and I’m telling you the bees are come from miles around to find basil flowers I wonder how purple basil tastes against regular Green Basil but since it is very pretty I suppose using it just as a Bee

Attractor works too they just swarm it so it brings in the pollinators to help with your tomatoes and every other plant in the garden now I grow a ton of Basil so I started in these wow that those roots are packed that is a ton of

Basil okay so real quick I promised you two plants that you should never grow grow near your Tomatoes the first one are potatoes potatoes are very susceptible to blight and are a host for fungi that causes ferium and verticillum Wilt which spread throughout the soil I’ve heard that not to grow potatoes

Near Tomatoes is terrible since they rhyme these diseases keep the plants from utilizing water resulting in leaf Wilt and death and if one crop get the disease either one of the diseases the chances are good that the other one will too especially if they are in close proximity also the root system of

Potatoes inhibits the growth of tomatoes if they’re planted next to each other the second thing you don’t want planted near your tomatoes are walnut trees Walnut Wilt is actually caused by the walnut trees I’ve heard not just Tomatoes I’ve heard that walnut trees inhibit the growth of just about every

Everything and you should not plant them around basically anything in general which is kind of sad because walnuts taste pretty good uptake of the chemical juglone which is toxic to tomatoes jugon toxicity to tomatoes directly depends on how close tomato plants are to walnut trees Tomatoes planted within the trees root spread

Which is two to three times the circumference of the tree itself are most Su susceptible to this disease all right in my opinion that was a very helpful video about companion planting be sure to go over to Next Level gardening’s Channel and give that video

A thumbs up I will have it linked in the description goodbye