Sue da Nimm wrote:
My dear old Mum always grew nasturtiums around her raspberry canes and
loganberries. She claimed that nasturtiums provided phosphates which made
the raspberries more productive. I've always grown climbing nasturtiums
around my fruit trees because of this - and because they brighten up the
orchard!
I told my neighbour why I did it, expecting to be mocked, but he told me
it used to be common practice to grow complimentary plants with fruit
trees and bushes.
Is he right or is this just an old wives' (mum's) tale?

Sue,

I can't comment about your specific example, but companion planting is well
known and practised a lot especially by organic gardeners.

For example planting onions with carrot to mask the smell of the carrots to
help with carrot root fly, planting garlic with roses because of the
sulphur that the garlic brings up from the sub-soil which means that the
rose will get some black spot prevention.

I don't know if nasturtiums bring up phospates or not, but they certainly
attract aphids which will keep the aphid from your orchard trees! (I wish
I'd done that this year ;( )

Bob Flowerdew has written a good book on the subject which is worth reading
- calles something like Companion Planting (or was it Companion Gardening?)


Sarah