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Sunflowers not only look great but they can also give you some great snacks with the seeds they produce. If you are growing sunflowers in your home garden you might be wondering: what can you plant with sunflowers? In this post, we go over what you can and cannot use as companion plants for sunflowers in your backyard garden.
Using sunflowers as companion plants to flowers, herbs, and vegetables in the garden can provide great benefits to other crops in your garden. Sunflowers attract aphids away from other crops and they also attract pollinators like bees that will help your other garden crops thrive.
Good Companion Plants for Sunflowers
- Bush Beans
- Echinacea (Cone Flowers)
- Dead Nettle
Bush Beans tend to like partial shade, so planting them where the sunflowers can provide this for the beans is a good companion plant combo. Find different types of bush beans to grow in your garden here.
Cucumbers like the same soil as sunflowers. Also sunflowers can provide some shade for cucumber plants.
Corn benefits from sunflowers due to beneficial insects being attracted by the sunflowers. Find companion plants for corn in the garden here.
Lettuce can be grown with sunflowers because of the shade that sunflowers offer. Find what else to plant with lettuce here.
Peppers benefit from sunflowers pulling aphids away from the pepper plants. Also peppers benefit from the shade that sunflowers can provide, this will help keep peppers from getting sun scorched.
Pumpkins are a good companion crop for sunflowers because their vines can provide good ground cover around sunflowers. This will help prevent weeds from growing around your sunflowers.
Tomatoes and Eggplant benefit from sunflowers being close by due to sunflowers attracting aphids away from the tomato plants. You can find other companion plants to plant with tomatoes here.
Many flowers like the ones listed above love being planted by sunflowers in the garden. Sunflowers keep many of the harmful pests away from the flowers allowing the flowers to thrive.
What Not To Plant With Sunflowers
- Pole Beans
Kohlrabi should not be planted near sunflowers due to the amount of shade that sunflowers cast on the ground.
Pole Beans should not be planted with sunflowers as their growth can be stunted by the sunflowers. Unlike bush beans, pole beans are affected by sunflower’s alleopathic characteristics.
Potatoes can struggle to thrive if planted too close to sunflowers, this is also due to the alleopathic characteristics of sunflowers. Find out what you can plant with potatoes here.