Milpa Gardens

Companion planting charts encode real relationships.

Refuted

Most companion planting advice you'll find online is folklore. Here's what we can actually defend, and why.

What is actually known

The bulk of the modern companion-planting canon descends from early-20th-century biodynamic and anthroposophical writing, propagated through mid-century popular gardening literature. Individual pairings are rarely trialled. A minority have real named mechanisms — volatile masking, living mulch, insectary provisioning — and are recorded here as a good hunch. Most have nothing.

Evidence: not yet confirmed against its 1 source.

what this rests on - one pointer

history of the companion planting literature

The flagship. No plan state implies it, which is exactly why it could never have been a rule.

When would that grow at your place? →

See this claim in the planner's evidence page

All folklore, checked · All plants