The Sun-Loving Flower That'll Thrive Next To Your Tomato Plants

Just as students learn better when paired with studious classmates, garden plants are known to grow better when they have the right neighbors. This strategy is called companion planting, and it helps with crop yields, pollination, pest and disease control, and soil health. One fine friend to pair along with tomatoes is an annual sunflower. If you've ever thought a large sunflower looks like a parasol, well so do your tomato plants, and they appreciate the shade.

Sunflowers and tomatoes play well together. The large yellow blooms support tomatoes by attracting pollinators and providing structural support and shade. Tomatoes certainly need sunshine, but too much direct sun can harm them. Sunflowers shield tomatoes from peak exposure, protecting them from sunscald, a tomato's version of a sunburn: The skin blisters and the tomato turns pale.

Remember that, while some plants thrive when grown next to certain others, they can also struggle with particular neighbors. Some should never be grown next to each other, such as tomatoes alongside potatoes or corn, which can trade similar diseases, like late blight, if too close together. And while sunflowers are healthy companions for tomatoes, they both need to be planted with care in terms of spacing and positioning, taking into factors like growing time and nutrient or water needs. This will maximize the benefits sunflowers can offer to their tomato buddies.

There are multiple advantages to the sunflower-tomato partnership, but it needs to be planned out. Since sunflowers take 70 to 100 days to mature, while tomatoes might take 60 to 100 days to produce fruit, planting the flowers earlier will allow them to grow enough to support your tomatoes. To set your sunflowers up for success, soak seeds overnight then sow them directly in a spot that will shade, but not crowd, your tomato plants.

Once both plants are mature enough, the towering flowers can start helping. In addition to providing shade, the sunflower draws stink bugs and aphids to it, acting as a trap crop and sparing the tomatoes. In the meantime, tomatoes will be seeking a type of trellis or structure to support them in their growth. Sunflowers can help here, too. Use twine to tie your tomato to the sunflower stalk. This works best when the sunflower is about 4 feet taller than the top of your tomatoes.

Though they're companion plants, tomatoes need much more water than sunflowers. And there are still some risks: Sunflowers are allelopathic, releasing chemicals into the soil that can inhibit other plants' success (particularly potatoes). Some people use dead sunflower stalks as tomato plant stakes, while others recommend giving each plant 2 to 3 feet of space to avoid any allelopathy. Not to worry if you go this route: Shade and pollinator benefits are still in play. In fact, this pairing is effective even whe the two plants are up to 5 feet apart.