Carrots love tomatoes Secrets of companion planting for successful gardening

Companion planting is when you put two or more plants together and, like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, they help each other out. A la Tom Fischer, this classic book teaches dudes that "watermelons are good to interplant with tomatoes," lettuce grows well with strawberries, and "cucumbers are offensive to raccoons, so they are a good plant with corn" (16). But Riotte also shares which plants don't make amicable companions, ending up like Courtney Love and Madonna locked in a room together. Sections on pest control are also worthy, with tips like using deploying praying mantises garden guardians, and interplanting onions among the cabbages and lettuce to repel rabbits.-Douglas Lord, Connecticut State Lib., Middletown (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.