Great Garden Companions: A Companion-Planting System for a Beautiful, Chemical-Free Vegetable Garden

This book is fantastic! The colors, pictures and layout of the book all work together to make an interesting but easy to follow guide. The information provided is logical and explained simply with room for your own experiences and ideas to take place. This isn’t an end all be all rulebook but a fun guide.Lovely writing style and I am enjoying it immensely.

This is a personal favorite - this book is not just about what to grow next to what, it's about a comprehensive gardening strategy that develops a strong, healthy ecosystem in and around your garden. The "garden companions" are not only plants, but animals (in the form of bugs - good and bad, house pets, her horse, birds and other wildlife) and materials (such as compost, mulch, cold frames, fertilizers, hoses, etc).The author groups plants into neighborhoods - the tomato, the potato, the cabbage, the squash, the roots and greens, and the perennial crop neighborhoods. Within these neighborhoods, she lists Family members (for instance, the tomato neighborhood includes tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and greens), Friends (in this case, basil, cleome, cosmos, parsley, Queen-Anne's lace and any tall Aster family flower), recommended mulch/groundcover, rotation schedule and notes. There are solid sections on bug identification (pests and beneficials) and detailed crop information, including trouble shooting suggestions.I did run into a few problems when trying to implement her suggestions in my own garden. First, her diagrams had no place specifically for melons or cucumbers. Not a big deal, I'd put them with the other vine crops, but they take up a lot of room and I grow a lot of them, so this has a big impact on my personal crop rotation schedule. When I was try to grow certain flowers for companion plants, I had difficulty finding dwarf varieties, and in some cases my companions outgrew my main crop and had to be trimmed back. I tried planting my corn and squash together (part of the Three Sisters planting), but the squash got ahead of the corn and overcrowded it. I can only imagine what would have happened if I had included beans. The instructions could be clearer as far as timing the crops. I also didn't like grouping my greens and roots, as I like to load up the greens area with plenty of manure, some of which is not as composted as it could be. When the beds filled up with plants, at times it was difficult to access what needed to be harvested because there was so much growing around it.The book is written in a friendly, conversational style, with attractive photo spreads of the author's garden that make you want to get and out and work in the dirt. I like the attention to organic methods and soil building, and the insect information (identification, attracting beneficials, warding off pests) is some of the best I've seen.

We don't really have a backyard, and most of our yard space is heavily shaded. There are only a few places with enough light/in the right location to grow veggies, so we have several small beds that we have to plan carefully. I LOVE how this book works and thinks - it really tells you how to get the most bang for your buck with limited growing space. By planting things that "like" each other near each other, and keeping plants that DON'T like each other farther apart, we can maximize how much we can effectively grow, even in a small space. This book has also been great for reinforcing to my city-born-and-bred husband (who, unlike me, did NOT grow up with parents who grew veggies to feed us all year) that you simply cannot plant the same things in the same place, year after year after year, and expect a bountiful harvest from healthy plants. This is how he used to garden (til I took it over and started crop rotation/companion planting), and needless to say, we no longer have plants dying early in the growing season every year because they are in soil the previous 3 years of that type of plant had already depleted. :)

I' m a start up market garden, looking for a way to combine growing clean produce, companion planting, annuals, permaculture and making a reasonable living at it all at the same time. I bought this book because the description fit what I'm wanting to do as far as what the Arthur calls planting neighborhoods. I AM SOOOOO GLAD I DID! Book arrived on time, as described. It is just EXACTLY what I was looking for. My other companion planting book , " carrots love tomatoes" came up unavailable, so I started reading reviews, looking for something that was hands on, to avoid having to find a signal Everytime I needed to look something up. I am so far on page 144. This book covers SO MUCH MORE, it is astounding! Sally goes into not only companion plant relationships but details on how different groups of plants work to put the right insects in place and more! Taking her concepts to a market level is DEFINITELY doable! I AM SOOO GLAD I GOT THIS WHILE WE ARE STILL AT THE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STAGE! It is going to make planning SOOOO MUCH EASIER!Whether your looking for a personal garden or market garden, don't miss getting this book! I can actually envision things like BT and neem oil no longer being needed or severely reduced! GOOD BYE CORPORATE PRODUCTS! BUY THE BOOK!

I have ordered hundreds of things on Amazon and never have posted a review....today I received this book and I can’t put it down. I’ve loved planting flowers for years but this is my second year with a veggie garden. I wanted to be able to incorporate flowers into my veggie garden but wanted to do it the right way...with flowers that benefit my veggies. I also wanted to learn more about good and bad bugs. This book has it all! I have other gardening books but this is the most helpful one I have ever read! I’m giving it 5 stars because not only is it informative...it’s sooooo easy to read! Love the pictures and drawings also.

Perhaps I expect too much, but there are certain things I look for in gardening books. Overall I want sound, practical advice that I can apply in my own garden. But I also want to be inspired, to be stimulated to try new things, to be guided on what's possible and what's practical, to gain a greater understanding of why some things work and some don't and to enjoy browsing and reading the book as much my garden will benefit from the wisdom it contains.Unfortunately, this book falls short of the mark on all counts. To start with, even opening the package when the book arrived was a disappointment. It's a flimsy volume, cheaply produced on thin paper. It will neither grace my bookshelves nor survive being used as a ready-to-hand reference in the garden. And while there are plenty of sketches throughout, the colour pictures are limited to two small sections. Another disappointment as the fine colour pictures so readily available in many gardening books, provide not only inspiration but also a clear idea of how the results of your efforts in the garden will turn out eventually.There is a lot of sound advice on companion planting, but much of it is about achieving colour and texture effects. I was looking for something that focussed a little more on guidance on companion planting to increase fertility and reduce the need for chemical intervention to combat pests and diseases. The information on this aspect of companion planting is limited and often offered without any explanation of why particular planting combinations work which makes it very difficult to adapt ideas to work in particular environments and gardens.The author is an American gardener, and no doubt an expert, but the use of American names for plants and references to plants not available in the UK, is irritating and adds to the impression that this is not the right book for the average UK gardener seeking sound and practical advice.I was also disappointed that so much of the book concentrated on the very basics of gardening - how to water, how to care for one's tools, garden layout and bed-making etc. While the quality of the advice is no doubt sound, it is derivative : advice that is readily available in any basic book on gardening. Anyone wishing to develop companion planting is likely to have already a firm grip on these areas - and probably half a dozen other gardening books which say much the same thing.The actual, useful information on companion gardening that is relevant to UK gardens, could probably have been published in a twenty-page leaflet.

This book is exactly what I was looking for in a vegetable companion guide. It includes sections on how best to grow different veggies (fertilizers, full sun/partial shade, addition of compost, etc.), a descriptive section on garden pests and how to deal with them, and tables for beneficial companion plants (plants that help each other grow, or plants that deter pests, etc.). It contains many beautiful full coloured pictures (but not so many that it takes away from the information included). I continue to come back to this book again and again. Very pleased with this purchase. Thank you.

I never try to mix vegetable in my garden before. I do garden organically and I'm starting to have some problem with insect. This book gives you the step by step to create a garden that will repel bad insect and attract beneficial insect. It gives you ideas on how to plan you garden with flowers in it and herbs mix with the vegetable. There is good gardening advice for each vegetable. The book will show you how to garden safely (no chemical), successfully and with added beauty. With this your garden will provide fresh vegetables, delightful herbs and gorgeous flowers. The book cover crop rotation, plant companion, attracting the good insect, perennials, seasonal care, mulching and more.

WE HAVE BEEN READING THIS BOOK SINCE WE RECEIVED IT. BUT ONCE SUMMER ARRIVED I DON'T THINK A DAY GOES BY WITHOUT MY HUSBAND OR MYSELF GOING TO REFER TO GREAT GARDEN CAMPANIONS BOOK. SO MUCH FANTASTIC INFORMATION IN THAT BOOK. WE CHANGED THINGS AROUND IN OUR GARDEN THIS YEAR FOLLOWING THE BOOK'S ADVICE AND OUR GARDEN IS GROWING BEAUTIFULLY. SO PLEASED I BOUGHT THIS BOOK FOR MY HUSBAND FOR CHRISTMAS.

Beautifully supported with images, well written articles, knowledgable authors.