The Best (and Worst) Lettuce Companion Plants
Finding the right lettuce companion plants can help your greens to thrive. Knowing which to avoid is important, too. In this guide, horticultural expert Lorin Nielsen shares her top tips to picking the right lettuce companion plants!
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Lettuce has been a garden staple for ages. Today’s cultivars were bred over time from bitter, prickly wild lettuce into the sweet or crunchy varieties we know today.
Grown as an annual, lettuce belongs to the daisy family, Asteraceae. It is most often grown as a leaf vegetable, but sometimes for its stem and seeds. Lettuce takes a bit of practice to perfect its place in the garden. But choosing the right lettuce companion plants can help you achieve better results and overall garden success.
Growing lettuce companion plants provides more than just diversity for fresh salads. Darker lettuce varieties offer added nutritional benefits, as they contain valuable antioxidants. Hydrating, vitamin-rich, and high in fiber, lettuce grows well alongside other compatible salad crops, making it an easy and rewarding addition to a productive vegetable garden.
What Is Companion Planting?
Companion planting is a gardening method that looks at the benefits of individual plants as part of the whole garden. It considers how plants interact with one another to support healthier growth and more reliable harvests.
For example, trellising vining crops over leafy greens can help protect them from summer heat. Planting edible flowers like marigolds among tomatoes may help reduce root knot nematodes in the soil. Herbs are not only flavorful additions to the kitchen but also work well as ground covers or living mulch. They help suppress weeds and retain soil moisture.
Although some individual benefits are still debated, one widely recognized advantage of companion planting is its role in building a stronger garden ecosystem. This approach supports both the gardener and the environment. Interplanting herbs, flowers, and vegetables attracts beneficial insects while creating a more visually appealing space than traditional row planting.
Companion planting also encourages diversity, both in what you grow and what you eat, making the garden more productive and resilient overall.
Good Lettuce Companion Plants
Depending on the season, great lettuce companion plants include root crops such as radish, carrot, parsnips, or beets. Taller flowers or vegetables also make excellent companions, along with aromatic herbs and alliums.
Whether you are trying to deter pests, extend the lettuce growing season, or attract beneficial insects to your garden, there is a companion plant well suited to the task.
Root Crops
In the fall season, growing root or allium crops as lettuce companion plants can help support your greens as winter approaches. When summer heat fades into cooler daily temperatures but pests are still active, radishes planted near lettuce grow quickly and attract aphids away from the greens. This allows them to function as a trap crop without negatively affecting the radish root.
Beets and carrots are also excellent choices for maximizing harvests per square foot, as they grow below ground. These crops can be planted closely with lettuce, without directly competing for water or nutrients. To round out a productive salad garden, grow fragrant onions, leeks, or garlic nearby. These alliums help repel or confuse caterpillar pests that are commonly drawn to leafy greens.
Flowers
Planting edible flowers like marigolds is a great way to attract beneficial insects, such as ladybugs, or to help deter root knot nematodes, which burrow into lettuce root systems and interfere with water and nutrient uptake.
Calendula offers added benefits as a medicinal plant while also luring slugs away from your greens, making it a useful trap plant for one of the most common lettuce pests.
Tall Salad Vegetables
Throughout late spring and the summer season, leafy greens such as spinach and arugula need protection to grow at their best. These crops can be grown out of season when planted alongside companions that provide natural shade. For example, planting them beneath sprawling eggplants and tomatoes or taller herbs like dill and parsley helps shield tender leaves from intense heat.
Taller herbs offer additional benefits, as they not only protect greens from the midday sun but also act as host plants for swallowtail butterflies. Bush beans are another excellent companion, as they work with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil. Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for leafy growth, making beans a valuable partner for greens.
Cucumbers thrive in heat and are often trellised to save space in the garden. This vertical growth habit allows you to plant leafy greens beneath them during summer, maximizing available growing area. Using this approach can help you enjoy a steady, successive harvest of leafy greens throughout the growing seasons.
What Not To Plant With Lettuce
Not all crops make good lettuce companion plants, and some can actually inhibit the growth of others.
Plants that should not be grown alongside lettuce include cabbage, kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, romanesco, and mustards. These vegetables are known as brassicas and belong to the cabbage family. They release chemical compounds through their root systems that can reduce lettuce seed germination.
Fennel is another poor companion, as it is known to suppress the growth of many common garden crops and should be planted in its own dedicated space away from salad greens.
Paying attention to the growing needs of different plants can also help you group them into successful companion families. Sun and shade requirements, soil moisture preferences, and soil pH all play an important role when planning companion plantings.
For example, planting lettuce beneath blueberries will not work well because they require very different soil conditions. Blueberries thrive in acidic soil, while lettuce prefers neutral to slightly alkaline soil to ensure proper nutrient uptake. Understanding soil texture, drainage, and organic matter levels will help you plan compatible plant groupings before planting them together in the garden.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can lettuce and basil be planted together?
They can be, but basil does not offer any particular aid to lettuce or vice versa.
Can you plant lettuce in the same place every year?
While it’s absolutely possible to do so, a safer technique is to practice crop rotation. This reduces the likelihood that pests that directly attack lettuce will try to establish permanent residence there. Crop rotation also enables you to have an ever-changing landscape in your garden, plus you can use it to improve your soil. For instance, after a crop of lettuce is done, you could plant pole beans that add nitrogen back to the soil.
Can I plant lettuce with potatoes?
The shallow roots of lettuce plants make it less likely to compete with your potatoes for soil nutrients. However, most people hill up the area around potatoes to get a larger crop. Your lettuce plants would rapidly end up surrounded by piles of soil or straw, making it difficult for them to do well in your vegetable garden. So while they’d make good companions in one way, they may not end up being the ideal companion plant choice!
