The best companion plants for onions. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
Experiment with companion planting for onions to improve the flavor, yield, and health of your garden-grown onions. Plant fenugreek with onion for larger, more flavorful bulbs. Grow onion with marigold, fennel, carrots, tomato, potato, peppers, or okra to increase yields and to limit Thrips damage by either repelling Thrips or by serving as a trap crop. Thrips damage onions by feeding on the foliage and by spreading destructive viruses between plants. Marigolds also discourage onion root maggot flies from laying their eggs on onion plants.
Try growing onions after a cover crop of winter rye. Bunching onions will grow more foliage and bulbing onions should produce larger bulbs. Although not all cover crops need to be tilled before planting, onions do grow better if the cover crop is mixed into the soil.
Some bad neighbors for onions? Beans, peas, cabbage, turnips, squash, cucumbers, and melons can harbor onion Thrips.
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