Herbs and Nightshades

The basic concept of my garden is a collection of nightshade vegetables (mostly tomatoes and jalapenos) mixed with herbs that are good companions for them, as well as some other perennial herbs.

The structure of the design is four circles of eight stepping stones each.  These circles are about five feet in diameter.  In the center of each circle, there is a smaller circle of about one foot diameter that is devoted to a perennial herb.  For these inner circles, I cut the bottoms off of large planting pots and buried them, in an effort to contain herbs that are invasive.  Currently, counter-clockwise from the bottom left, I have peppermint, spearmint, oregano and bee balm.  The others have done fairly well, but the bee balm tends to get eaten by some garden pest.  I thought I was going to lose it last year, but when the borage bloomed around it, it was left alone.  I wasn't too concerned about it anyway, since it isn't a food crop and I figured that it was keeping these pests from eating other plants for which I had more use.

The area between the four circles, in the center of the garden, is also devoted to perennial herbs.  The centerpiece of the garden is a rosemary bush that we have had for about six years now.  My wife (who claims not to have a green thumb) bought it as a seedling and planted it in her herb garden at our last house.  I brought it with us when we moved.  She got the kitchen sage which is blooming next to it at about the same time and I brought them over together.  To complete the circle around the rosemary, I got three ornamental sages.  Actually, I got three different colors of meadow sage: light purple, dark purple and white.  There is also a small thyme plant in the shadow of the rosemary.

The picture above was taken last spring when the sage was in full bloom.  Last year was the first time our rosemary bloomed, but it only had a few flowers.  I am hoping for more this year.  The bamboo poles in the picture indicate where I planted tomato seedlings and you can see garlic on the left side of the garden.

The companion herbs that I plan on planting this year include marigold, parsley, borage, cilantro, dill and chamomile.  I am also interested in trying to grow cumin since I've been cooking with it a lot recently.