Hi everyone! I'm a newbie gardener in the process of planning a vege garden and am very keen to use companion planting as I really don't want to use chemicals on our food. I saw one design that had comfrey planted in a raised bed under a blackberry - any chance someone could confirm whether this would be a happy relationship or would the comfrey compete with the blackberry?
I've done a fair amount of reading up on what works with what in preparation for my own garden but I can't quite get my head around how companion planting works in practice so I'm hoping someone can explain it to me (please excuse my ignorance!). Could someone please let me know how it works having perennials in with veges? My limited experience means that I can only envisage poor perennials being massacred as I remove all the spent vege plants and beef up the soil again and I'm unsure how to work the companion plants in with crop rotation. As an example, marigolds are beneficial planted with brassicas (I hope I got that right). So when I move my brassica bed from bed A to bed B, am I meant to move my marigolds with them or do I need to have marigolds in every bed? Or does companion planting not work with crop rotation?
I'm assuming a separate permanent bed of marigolds wouldn't work as they need to be planted in the same soil? And I guess the same goes for helpful herbs - I'm thinking of having a permanent central bed of herbs but wasn't sure if they would still benefit the surrounding garden if they were planted separately ... I had hoped to have a garden where all the plants are intermingled but I was going cross-eyed trying to work out how to manage that, probably over-complicating it!
Any help would be really appreciated!