Have you heard of Companion Planting? If you Google it, you will come up with so many hits on so many various blogs, all over the US and beyond. There are DIY sites and YouTube videos to help you set out your garden with companion plantings. It’s all very good information and, for most things, works well. But we have come up with one that no one has on any charts.

So, if you’re not familiar with Companion Planting, it is basically pairing up plants that are mutually beneficial, or supportive, for each other. Let’s say you have Broccoli or Kale and you notice that every year they are inundated with aphids, next year you might want to try planting them along side Chives, Cilantro, and/or Nasturtiums – all repel aphids. If you’d like to explore this further, you can find some handy dandy charts here.

Now, this is the type of companion planting I’m talking about! You have to look closely (seems that I say that a great deal while talking about our photos), but if you do – you will see two different trees growing together. The brighter colored, large leafed tree is a lime tree. It is growing under the protection of a Chinese Elm tree. The Chinese Elm was a volunteer from Ramona, but – after the first freeze that almost killed the lime tree, I decided to let the Elm grow up to shelter the lime.

You may scoff, but when we had our couple of nights of hard freeze, I did not cover the lime tree, and this is the extent of the frost damage. The elm tree will eventually loose its leaves and then I will end up wrapping the lime tree for the winter. But for the quick frost, the elm did its job quite well. I’m hoping that get along long enough that we’ll eventually get actual limes! Time only will tell.

I’ll have to study the companion planting charts a little more closely so that this season I plant to control the bugs quite a bit better. I’m still getting used to the seasons here, and so far my vegetable growing has been for the birds. Figuratively and literally. You could also throw in the squirrels and the grasshoppers for good measure. Just saying. As I figure things out, you can be sure that I will share them here with you! Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!