Hillingdon Allotment News 14: Marigolds and broad beans, or incompatible partners

This could be headed ‘A tail of companions parted’. During last autumn one of the patches on my allotment was sown with broad beans together with an edging of African marigolds, as those of you in the know will be aware this is called companion planting and the end result should be that the marigolds deter black fly from the beans. Well I am always happy to try something new and went along with the idea. Come the spring time after a very wet winter, and the beans had more or less survived intact with a few exceptions, as did the marigolds. Both grew apace, and come the time of the dreaded black fly I was amazed at the result. Yep! all the beans were covered in nasty black patches of flies, and the marigolds were as clean as a whistle and remained that way until the beans were cropped. The moral of this one off experiment is, if you want to keep your marigolds clean – plant broad beans!

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