True Spring Tomato (Solanaceae) Companions
Why do tomatoes and basil make the perfect pair?
When I think of summer it’s the smell of tomato leaves as you brush them aside to pluck their fruit paired with the heady scent of basil. Once, starring at the perfection of aged purple gum leaves on parched red earth I wondered if colour harmony must be some instinctive response derived from the natural world around us: pale green saltbush against golden sand, pink blossoms waving in a clear spring sky. If this were true, perhaps taste harmony is also based on what natural grows well together in the garden. Just as the colours of a butterfly delight, think of how basil is simply perfection on a tomato pizza or on top of a pasta sauce!
Some things are made for one another – tranquility triumphs within a balanced garden.
BASIL
My favourite basil for colour is the purple ornamental, but sweet basil is the tastiest. This grows up to 45cm towering over the 15cm compact bush basils. It has been reported that basil helps tomatoes resist disease and actually improves the flavour of tomatoes it grows near, I can’t confirm this, but it certainly does attract bees if you let it flower. Be warned though, once your basil flowers it is the end, pinch those blossoms off as soon as they appear to extend the life and taste of your plants. A pesto of old basil tends to taste like grass and if you’re wondering that is as ghastly as it sounds. It repels aphids, white-fly and fruit-fly; if you leave it on a windowsill it can help yours well as the tomatoes warding off houseflies and mosquitoes.
AMARANTH
Amaranth rises through a sea of green with crimson, purple splashed or yellow foliage, rising up to 60cm. Leafy amaranth is eaten like spinach and grain amaranth dazzles with sculptural plumes. Fast growing, drought tolerant with few disease problems itself it is said to be a good companion for eggplants as it repels insects. Tomatoes become more resistant to harmful insects and potatoes have greater yields. It also loosens the soil for plants that come after the solanace rotation such as beetroot, carrots and radishes.
Berry punnets reused for seedling propagation
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Simple cut and fold the cartons for a sustainable, free draining, biodegradable seed raising pot.
PROPAGATION
Both these plants like the tomatoes they assist require warm weather to flourish and shouldn’t be planted out until the maximum daily temperature is reliable over 10C (November in Melbourne). In True Spring, I plant them in discarded berry punnets to keep them warm, with a tray of water underneath to keep them moist.
When they show their first true leaves I gently move them into a milk carton. Many people transplant their seedlings into milk cartons with both the top and bottom cut off, but after too many seedlings falling out the bottom before their time, I decided to fold the bottom in.
Then I place the folded carton this inside a bottle greenhouse with water in the bottom half allows them to thrive despite the cold. When the temperature is right simply unfold the bottom and plant directly in the ground without disturbing the roots.
This year the warm weather seemed to come late so I sowed a second batch of basil and amaranth in High Summer as a backup.
Get the upper hand in this battle against our cool weather enemies!
The garden bed has been getting pretty bare as the cool weather plants are taking their last gasps. I want to throw in a whole lot of lettuce seedlings and directly sow some beans to grow up the tomato stakes as I transition from legumes to solanaceae.
Come High Summer when the tomatoes go in, the weather is going to quickly turn things crispy, delicate seedlings will fry!
Although not considered traditional companion plants, they will act as a
nurse crop. They shelter seedlings from excessive sun, reduce weed competition and prevent erosion.
The beans will protect the young tomatoes as they grow up their supports. On the ground established lettuces will shade the roots, so constant mulching won’t be necessary, and more importantly will protect the true tomato companions that will only just be ready for transplant when weather is getting hot – marigolds, basil, amaranth, dandelions, chives.
Unfortunately my plan was brutally cut off at the ground and silvery tracks betrayed the criminal. Soon it will be too hot for the slimey ones to show their heads, but for now they are having a field day on delicious, sappy new spring growth. What’s a girl to do?! I’m yet to find herbs that repel snails (they just live in them!) and coffee grounds just don’t cut it. Sharp calcium rich egg shells and crispy seaweed help, but these snails are seriously out of control! There is not enough beer in the world to drown their enthusiasm!
THE SOLUTION?
Build a fortress! Take the idea of the juice bottle greenhouse and bring it to the garden bed! All we need is a minor modification, keep the bottle top on and drill some tiny ventilation holes to prevent the nasties crawling in. Bury it deep enough to protect against cutworm as well! Only 1 is needed for a lettuce until it is established, but for beans they can be stacked 3-4 high until the stem is thick enough to hold its own. Just put a short stick inside the greenhouse for it to climb and when you remove the bottle simply tie this to the taller stake. The trapped heat will also help the beans and lettuces thrive!
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Sharp eggshells deter snails and slugs, but also add calcium to the soil, available for next years crop
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As a rule of thumb I only harvest my lettuce when it has more than 6 leaves so I don’t take too many of its “solar panels”. Following this logic when your seedling can afford to loose one or two leaves to the snails, you can take the bottle off!
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Stack the bottles as high as you need, wait for stems to be thick enough that they can’t be felled with a single chomp!
Check out my next post to see how I have snail proofed the nursery!
We know why seaweed mulch is a good idea, but what’s the best way to use it?
Now you know the why, here is the how.
Before the blaze of summer can tempt you to take the plunge, how about a springtime stroll along the water’s edge? When you roast in the height of the hot weather so will your garden, now is the time to prepare ahead!
COLLECTION
It’s easy to be greedy when you know how good seaweed is for the garden, but only take small amounts and not all from the same spot. You don’t want to devastate the delicate beach ecosystems!
I make an outing of it, carrying a small bucket and strolling along, taking only palm sized pieces. I make sure there are some decent footprints behind me before I pick up another piece. These smaller pieces are also much, much easier to handle than lugging a great frond of kelp along the beach, the finer stuff makes better mulch anyway.
It’s better to gather seaweed ‘mid-beach’ because it is drier than that at the ocean’s edge and can be shaken free of sand.
Believe me, having transported wet seaweed home in the past, the great sopping, stinking mess of sodden seaweed is a headache not worth repetition. Conversely, anything too high up the beach has been there too long and may contain land weed seeds from the dunes.
WHEN TO APPLY
As it takes 3.5 months to release nitrogen back into the soil, don’t apply just as you plant out your prize tomato plants. The sudden decrease in nitrogen will stress them out.
Time it so when they start fruiting in mid summer they get that extra boost. This is beneficial not just in the case of tomatoes, but many fruiting plants as too much nitrogen in the soil early on can encourage vigorous leafy growth at the expense of flowers and therefore fruit!
So True Spring is the perfect time to apply seaweed mulch, just as you are sowing your tomato seeds, come the end of High Summer when the first fruit is ripening they’ll be crying out for the extra nutrients.
HOW TO APPLY IT
As simple as soak, crush and spread
As I mentioned in my post Seaweed Mulch Explained, seaweed itself is not particularly salty, it’s the sand that is very alkaline. So when I get home from the beach with my bounty I just shake the sand out and give it a good soak in a bucket to get any residuals off. Then I lay it in the sun to dry out again so I can crush it with my boots into a finer stuff.
This is optional if the pieces you picked are already quite small, but there is a satisfaction akin to jumping in puddles in the crunch this makes. The seaweed can then be sprinkled around each plant, carefully avoiding their stems and thoroughly watering it all in. In a month the companion plants should have filled in the gaps and any bare soil can be covered with a ‘chop and drop’ of any unruly herbs from the border.
COMPOST
Of course if you don’t apply it directly as mulch you can simply add it to your compost. While land plants require cellulose to thicken their walls to stop them flopping over, seaweed is low in cellulose as it’s supported by water and this means it breaks down really quickly in the compost heap. Sluggish composts often lacks nitrogen so seaweed is an excellent compost activator. It helps break down high carbon materials in the compost such as fallen leaves, newspaper and fruit waste. So if you have any extra seaweed lying around why not add it to the pile.
SEAWEED TEA
Another option is to soak it in a container of water for several weeks, then dilute a small amount in a full watering can and spray on or around struggling plants. When applied the nutrients are available straight away, unlike when mulching so it is excellent to pick up unhappy looking plants. It is very important to add oxygen to the brew by agitating it three times a day or it will become anaerobic (horribly stinky). This entails swirling it with a trowel until it forms a vortex to keep it aerobic. I must admit this is what drove me to using it as a mulch. A barrel of anaerobic seaweed ooze is just about as unpleasant as it sounds when it’s been soaking a while. Don’t even get me started on the visceral reaction I had when some of it spilled onto my pants and then began its merry journey downward into my boots. So I council if making a tea, make it in something small, but… when you can be as lazy as collect, rinse, apply, why bother? Your plants should never look sad if you have properly made their bed!
Perfected over billions of years, nature always provides a solution far simpler and more effective than anything we can dream up in a whole lifetime.
Every day with a hiss and a foam our beaches wash up a gift for gardeners – tonnes of seaweed bursting with nutrients and what’s more it’s free. Every year the council for Altona beach spends around $300,000 to remove it, $300,000 to beautify a beach from seaweed! It is either dumped in landfill or washed(!) and returned to the sea! I discovered this when I was researching to see if it was legal to gather seaweed in Melbourne, I’m going to go ahead and assume yes on this one.
A small percentage is now being converted into liquid fertiliser, which is a start, but wait a second…why does it need to be commercially processed to turn it into a liquid or dehydrated powder and bottled in plastic and delivered to a nursery and purchased for $10/L and diluted and sprayed on your garden and the bottle thrown in the recycle bin? Why do all that when it is the most divine mulch you’ll ever use and all you have to do is spend a day at the beach?
Now that sounds like an excellent way of saving time, energy and money!
WHY I USE SEAWEED MULCH
2.5 years ago we started our first vegetable garden. My mother gave me a jar of powdered seaweed for out little 1mx1m pallet garden, part of a no-dig recipe sprayed between layers of dry straw. Then Permaculture crept in and with it shiny tomes raving about seaweed tea, how could I resist making my own brew? The result, well…it was smelly, honestly it stank like a sewer! And some mosquitoes got in and that was the end of that idea! There had to be an easier way! There was – it was simple, just rinse it and spread it on the garden beds, done, easy. When my other quizzed me on it, I didn’t really have an answer, mulching is good, seaweed is good so don’t they make a perfect pair? I retaliated with research and was pleasantly surprised that it was actually a brilliant thing for your garden!
AND WHY YOU SHOULD TOO
nutrient rich and the nutrients are easily absorbed by plants
trace elements are transferred to the plant and its fruit, more nutrient rich for you too
free and easily accessible and free, a beach holiday once or twice a year is all you need
contains very little salt, the sand is what makes it too alkaline and this can be washed off
soil conditioner, healthier soil
plant conditioner, healthier plants
make plants more resistant to disease, shares no diseases with land plants
deters pest like snails and slugs
keeps soil moist – less watering (less heat stress)
insulates the soil – cool in summer, warm in winter (makes plants more frost resistant)
suppresses weeds, contains no land weed seeds
WHAT’S IN SEAWEED?
all major and minor plant nutrients
all necessary plant trace elements (over 60 in total)
alginic acid
vitamins
auxins
two or more gibberellins
and antibiotics
No wonder they say it’s good for humans to eat too!
When I read this list I’ll admit I wasn’t even sure what some of those things were, but it’s all pretty straight forward once you can get your tongue around the words!
These are all essential for plant growth and health, they are a plants food and drink.
NON-MINERAL NUTRIENTS
(hydrogen, oxygen, carbon) are provided by air and water, converted using the sun’s energy (photosynthesis) into starches and sugars. However, all the other required nutrients can be provided by seaweed.
MINERAL NUTRIENTS
dissolve in water and absorbed through plant roots. When soil minerals are not in balance plants become sickly. This is exacerbated when the same crop is planted year after year, depleting the soil of specific elements.
Just as iron in vegetables (non-heme) can be harder to absorb than iron from meat (heme), the minerals you are adding to your soil need to be in a form that is usable for the plants otherwise it won’t be absorbed.
Trace elements can be made available to plants by chelating (combining the mineral atom with organic molecules so they cannot form insoluble salts the plant cannot absorb).
Seaweed contains starches, sugars and carbohydrates that possess such chelating properties, so all the lovely nutrients it contains are available to the plants which need them.
VITAMINS
Soil depletion has adversely affected the vitamin and mineral content in our fruit and vegetables. Healthier soil rich in vitamins and nutrients leads to a healthier product for us to eat. Vitamins contained within seaweed include:
vitamin C
beta-carotene, fucoxanthin
B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B12
pantothenic acid, folic acid and folinic acid
vitamin E (tocopherol), vitamin K
other growth-promoting substances
AUXINS & GIBBERELLINS
Encourage the growth of more cells as well as enlarge, stimulating the growth in both plant stems and roots.
SOIL CONDITIONER
The alginic acid in seaweed , whether it be fresh, dried or liquid, improves the soils ability to retain moisture and hold together. This helps to form a good crumb structure: large particles providing drainage and air movement and small pore spaces between to hold water and plant nutrients. This means in times of heavy rain, seaweed can improves sloping, silty, sandy soil so that seedlings and nutrients no longer get washed away. Conversely when it is very hot the soil will be slower to dry out.
BACTERIA & NITROGEN
A good crumb structure stimulates growth of root systems as well as the activity of soil bacteria. The good bacteria secrete beneficial polyurinides that further condition the soil as the seaweed decomposes. The seaweed should be applied 3.5 months before the plants require an increase in nitrogen. This is because bacteria require nitrogen to break down undecomposed vegetable matter into simpler units, leading to a temporary reduction in nitrogen in the soil. After this latent period the overall amount of nitrogen in the soil is dramatically increased so it is beneficial to time this with for instance the fruiting of a tomato when the plant requires a little something. However, if a pick-me-up is required the nutrients in liquid seaweed are available at once and this can be used as a foliar spray absorbed directly through the leaves.
ANTIBIOTICS
Plants mulched with seaweed develop a resistance to pets and diseases. It is believed that soil fungi and bacteria produce natural antibiotics which control pathogen population reducing the likelihood of a number of plant diseases. The concentration of organic matter/seaweed in the soil increases the production of these antibiotics.
