Help Your Tomato Plants Thrive By Planting This Herb Next To Them

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Tomatoes are the vegetable grown most often in backyard gardens across the United States. While gardeners are typically cautious about what not to grow next to tomatoes, there are also beneficial companion plants that can help your tomato plants thrive. One such plant is parsley, which is among the most frequently cultivated garden herbs in America. Not only do these two popular plants get along well in shared space, but parsley, like tomatoes, is a fuss-free plant that's easily grown by both beginner and experienced gardeners.

Besides being easy to grow, utilizing parsley as a companion plant provides a variety of benefits for your tomatoes, including enhancing the yield, as well as the taste of them. These benefits include attracting pollinators such as bees, as well bugs that prey on aphids and hornworms, which are known to destroy tomato plants. Since it is a natural fungicide, parsley can also help prevent disease from attacking your tomato plants. In turn, tomato plants actually enhance the growing conditions for parsley by providing shade. A final benefit, which is more for the gardener than the plants, is that parsley and tomatoes compliment each other just as well in a variety of recipes as they do in the garden.

When it comes to creating a garden that has both tomato and parsley plants, the first step is deciding if you want to grow tomatoes from seedlings or seeds. If you only plan to grow a few plants or are new to gardening, seedlings are probably the way to go. However, if you plan to grow a substantial number of tomato plants or are not able to find seedlings for the variety you hope to grow, you will be better off with seeds. Regardless of which you choose, wait until there is no longer the possibility of frost before planting. At that point, follow the directions for spacing based on the variety of tomato plants you select. This can range from 18 to 36 inches apart.

In order to create a companion system, you will need to leave adequate space for a row of parsley. Given that parsley does best with around 6 hours of sunlight, orient the location of your parsley to where it gets full sun for a portion of the day, then is partially shaded by the tomato plants the remainder of the sunlight hours. Then, after the final frost of the year, plant Sow Right Flat Leaf Parsley or similar seeds ¼-inch in the ground a foot or so away from the tomato plants. Once the parsley sprouts reach a couple inches tall, begin thinning to a spacing of about a foot apart.

You can even create a tomato and parsley companion system without utilizing a full garden plot. If you plan to grow individual tomato plants in containers, choose a container that is 24-inches or larger. Once you've planted your tomato plant in the center of the container, you can surround it with a handful of parsley plants.