Tomato, basil, pepper, oregano, thyme and rosemary, the plants that go on a pizza, grown in one bed.
Why these are grouped
Chosen for the kitchen. Chosen for the kitchen, with one thing it gets wrong. Oregano, thyme and rosemary want dry, lean, sharply drained ground, and the tomato and basil beside them want the opposite. Keep the herbs at the driest edge, or give them the dry herb bed of their own next to this one.
At least 2.5 m²27 ft². If your bed is smaller, the planner grays this plant team out, says why, and offers the nearest adaptation that fits. It never swaps in something else without telling you.
The one trial we know of found no difference in flavor, and nobody has proposed how it would work. Plant basil next to tomatoes anyway. You'll want them at the same time in the kitchen.
What is known
No proposed mechanism. One garden trial is known: a 2004 West Virginia University study whose blind taste tests over three years found no consistent preference for tomatoes grown with companions. Extremely widely believed.
The planner won’t plan around this claim. What is known instead is below.
What is known: Some plant teams rest on a real way one plant acts on another. A kitchen bundle says only that you'll want these things in the same bowl. Both are good ways to plant. Only the first has plants working on each other.
If you skip this, it still grows, just less well. The planner suggests it.
How it works: Zones encode average annual minimum winter temperature, which governs whether a woody perennial survives to spring. It is the wrong quantity for an annual, which never sees winter.
A zone that is too warm is a second, different mechanism. Mild winters do not kill a perennial; they fail to chill it. Deciduous fruit crops need a winter dormancy period to break bud and set fruit, so in a zone milder than a plant is adapted to it may survive and never crop. Only the cold end is enforced, because only winter survival follows from what a zone measures; the warm end gets advice and is never refused.
That warm limit is a property of the cultivar, and that limits what this rule can do. Chill requirement is published per variety and varies enormously within a species, so a species-level ceiling says "the modeled range does not reach your zone", never "no plant of this kind will crop for you". So above its range the planner still offers the plant, with advice to choose a cultivar rated for your zone.
Evidence: checked against 1 source in the research-based literature.
Winter cold-hardy cultivars adapted to the colder regions of Oregon (such as zones 5 to 7), may not grow normally in regions of the Willamette Valley (zone 8) where winters are warmer and plants receive less winter chill.
Plus 2 working notes on how the sources were read.
