Plant Herbs, Onions, & Root Crops with Your Kale

Kale is a wonderful plant to grow in your vegetable garden, but unfortunately, it's a cruciferous vegetable, which means it's extra prone to pest pressure. Cabbage worms, aphids, flea beetles, cabbage loopers—you name it. And that's especially true during the warmer summer months.

So if you're considering growing some kale, make sure to include plenty of kale companion plants in your planting plan. Good companion plants for kale can (a) attract beneficial insects, (b) add extra nutrients to the soil, (c) repel pests, (d) shade the soil, or (e) all of the above.

Think of companion planting as playing offense against pests. You don't want to play defense because that means the pests are already chewing through your kale leaves and you're going to panic and start spraying pesticides. It's much better to plant strategically so that you're growing kale next to things like cilantro, dill, and calendula, plants that have been proven to decrease pests on kale.

Planting offensively for kale will set up a healthy growing space that can maintain itself without a bunch of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Sound good to you?

Let's look at the best plants to grow with kale in your garden.

How Kale Grows Best

Good companion plants will not only increase the resiliency of your kale and your overall garden space, they'll also share similar growing preferences. Let's look first at kale's preferences.

KALE TEMPERATURE PREFERENCE

Kale loves cool weather (temps between 45°F and 75°F) and can handle a light to moderate freeze. In fact, the leaves actually taste a little sweeter after a touch of frost. You can put kale starts in your garden well before the last frost date has passed in the spring, basically as soon as your soil is workable.

Kale is actually a biennial plant, so it doesn't have just one growing season. It wants to hang around for several seasons. If your plants are established, they may be able to push through the heat of summer, though this is when they'll face the most pest pressure.

Kale plants will pick their production back up in the fall, and if you have mild winters, your plants could very well produce leaves throughout the coldest months.

KALE SUNLIGHT NEEDS

Kale only needs about 4 to 6 hours of sunlight a day to produce leaves. In warmer weather, kale appreciates a little shade cast by larger fruiting plants.

KALE WATERING PREFERENCES

Leafy greens like kale need to be watered consistently.

KALE NUTRIENT NEEDS

The main nutrient to focus on when growing kale is nitrogen, which helps your leafy greens produce lots of leaves. You can give your kale plants nitrogen, plus other nutrients, by pushing some compost around their base every couple of months. I typically don't fertilize my kale plants beyond this compost, and they produce tons and tons of leaves for me.

KALE SPACE REQUIREMENTS

You should space your kale plants about 12 inches apart from each other, but thanks to their tendency to grow up and then out, you can plant lots of smaller things around your kale. This is one way companion planting helps maximize space in your garden. Make sure to harvest the older, outer kale leaves frequently so that its neighbors have plenty of room to grow.

The 20 Best Kale Companion Plants

Here's a list of the 20 best plants to grow with your kale this cool season.

• Basil
• Beans
• Beets
• Calendula
• Carrots
• Chives
• Cilantro
• Dill
• Garlic
• Lettuce
• Marigolds
• Nasturtiums
• Onions
• Oregano
• Peas
• Radishes
• Rosemary
• Sage
• Spinach
• Thyme

Now, let's look at how these plants make great companions.

The Best Herbs to Grow with Kale Plants

Consider fragrant herbs the center of your offensive line when you're growing leafy greens like kale. These herbs contain chemical compounds that repel certain pests, and their scent is strong enough to "hide" kale from other pests that use smell to find food.

Put your offensive line right where they'll make the most difference: either right next to your kale plants or around the border of your raised beds. I like to plant perennial herbs and flowers around the edge of my raised beds, and then I grow taller annual herbs in the middle, near my kale plants.

Here are some of the best herbs to grow near kale.

Oregano

Oregano's strong scent is particularly great at keeping cabbage white butterflies away from your kale. That prevents them from laying their eggs on your kale leaves, which means you never have to deal with their offspring, the caterpillars that actually do most of the damage. Oregano can also repel aphids.

Oregano is a hardy perennial plant in the Lamiaceae family. It's frost hardy, so it can hang in there as long as your kale plants are still producing.

Rosemary

That lovely woodsy scent of rosemary keeps pests like cabbage worms, cabbage loopers, and slugs at bay. It's also strong enough to camouflage the oh-so-enticing smell of your kale leaves. Rosemary isn't frost hardy like its cousin, oregano, but it will grow in your garden while kale pests are most active.

Sage

Sage is a wonderful herb to deter everything from flea beetles to cabbage moths (which deposit cabbage worm eggs). The scent of sage actually disrupts the sensory receptors in insects, making it more difficult for them to target certain crops. Sage can handle some frost.

Thyme

This is the last perennial herb in the Lamiaceae family I'll mention. Thyme repels aphids and cabbage moths. Thyme essential oil is so effective at controlling aphids that it's used as a pesticide on ornamental plants.

Cilantro

Cilantro is an annual herb from the Apiaceae family. Like kale, it grows best in the cool weather of spring and fall. Its scent alone is strong enough to keep certain pests away.

Once the weather starts warming up in the spring or summer, cilantro will bolt, or flower in preparation for seed production. Cilantro flowers attract all kinds of beneficial insects, including parasitic wasps, which can take care of pests that are attacking your kale plants as you move into the warmer months.

Dill

Like cilantro, dill repels certain pests and then sends up flowers that draw in all the beneficial insects once the weather turns from cool to warm. It's pretty cool that Apiaceae herbs produce their much-adored umbel-shaped flowers during the time that pests are most active.

Some gardeners even swear that growing dill near brassica seedlings makes them more robust.

Basil

Basil is an annual herb from the Lamiaceae family. I think most humans love the summery smell of basil, but pests do not. Let some of your basil plants flower in the warmer months, and they'll attract tons of beneficial insects to your garden space.

The Best Leafy Greens to Grow with Kale Plants

Growing smaller leafy greens alongside your kale may not offer particular benefits like pest protection, but it does shade the soil, help retain moisture, and prevent weeds from popping up—all good things for your kale. These fast-growing plants also produce a ton of leaves for you to use in your next salad bowl or smoothie.

Lettuce and spinach, my two favorite small leafy greens, have the same growing preferences as kale: they like shorter days, cooler temps, and plenty of moisture in the soil. Neither of them are brassicas, so they won't necessarily attract the same kinds of pests as your kale.

Lettuce

Lettuce from the Asteraceae family isn't quite as frost hardy as kale, but it's still a cool season fav. As long as you commit to harvesting your lettuce leaves each week, you can really pack these plants in your garden. I plant lettuce seeds in any little open spots I see in my raised beds. You'll get your first lettuce harvest in just 30 days.

Spinach

Spinach in the Amaranthaceae family is frost hardy and can be planted in the garden as soon as your soil can be worked in the spring. You can also pack these plants in there if you plan to harvest frequently. And harvest you should! You'll get to take your first leaves for a kale and spinach smoothie in just 30 to 45 days.

If you want more large leafy greens like kale, I also recommend spinach's cousin, Swiss chard. It's every bit as ornamental and healthy as kale. And it too is a biennial you can enjoy for many seasons.

The Best Alliums to Grow with Kale

Alliums are the next key players in your offensive line against pests. I like to think of them as the quarterbacks. Onions, garlic, chives, shallots, and leeks all give off a strong scent that deters garden pests. Planting garlic and onions between kale has been scientifically proven to reduce pest pressure on brassicas.

So if you can only plant one thing with your kale, make it an allium.

Chives

I plant chives in every single one of my raised beds. They repel everything from small pests like aphids to large pests like rabbits with their strong odor. Chives plants can be slow to get started, but after that, they're low-maintenance and hardy. Your chives will pop back up year after year, and you'll be able to harvest enough chives for a year-round supply from just a plant or two.

Onions

Onions have a particularly strong odor that pests like cabbage looper moths really don't seem to like. Onions thrive during the cool season. I love to plant some bulbs right in the middle of any beds where I'm growing leafy greens.

Garlic

Garlic offers all the benefits of onions but is a little easier to tuck in between plants due to its size. Garlic is typically planted in the fall, and then it'll hang out in your garden all winter. In the spring, it'll really start growing, just in time to protect your kale plants. Garlic is so effective at repelling pests that you can buy a garlic extract to spray on the leaves of your plants as an organic treatment.

The Best Root Crops to Grow with Kale

Root crops and leafy greens make an excellent pair in your garden as well as in your kitchen. (I mean, think of how tasty a radish or carrot slice can be in your salad.)

They work together in the garden because they take up space in opposite ways. Kale will grow up, fan out, and eventually turn into a mini tree, while a root crop does most of its growth under the soil. Planting some roots around your leafy greens allows you to use garden space efficiently.

Like kale, root crops also grow best in nice, cool weather and prefer the soil to stay more consistently moist.

Carrots

You can have frost tolerant carrots growing alongside your kale well before your last frost date in the spring. Direct sow your carrot seeds in the garden, and make sure to mark the rows where you've planted since they take a while to germinate.

Beets

Beets need more space to themselves than carrots, but you can still interplant them with leafy greens. The trick is just to make sure your kale doesn't cast too much shade on the beet leaves, which could slow the growth of your root crop.

Radishes

Some gardeners say not to plant radishes with kale since they're in the same family, but I ignore that guideline for radishes. Radishes grow so quickly from seed (some varieties in just 30 days), and they're not likely to compete with your kale for nutrients. I tuck radishes into empty spots in my garden beds.

The Best Fruiting Plants to Grow with Kale

Kale grows well with pretty much every fruiting plant you might want to grow in your raised beds. It can share space with cool and warm season fruiting plants, and you might even have some kale stick around for your hot season plants, as well.

If you're planting kale for the fall when it's still warm, it's a great idea to use large fruiting plants to shade your kale until it cools off a bit.

The very best fruiting plants to grow with kale are legumes from the Fabaceae family.

Beans

In the warm season, you can plant low-growing bush beans around the base of your kale plants or train some pole beans up a trellis behind your kale. Beans actually fix nitrogen in the soil, and nitrogen is the number one nutrient that can help your kale plants grow more leaves. That way, you won't have to use a bunch of nitrogen-heavy fertilizer, which can actually attract pests.

Peas

Peas loving growing in the cool season, when your kale plants will be at their best. You can plant pea seeds as soon as your soil is workable in the spring and then again when your temps drop in the fall. Like beans, peas add nitrogen to the soil so that leafy greens can enjoy a slow release of this nutrient.

The Best Flowers to Grow with Kale

Flowers are the last players in our offensive line against pest opponents. Flowers attract beneficial insects like ladybugs and even parasitic wasps to help you take care of non-beneficial bugs. When you first plant out kale in the early spring, you can grow frost-tolerant flowers like calendula, chamomile, snapdragons, pansies, and violas.

After your last frost, you can add nasturtiums and marigolds to your cabbage bed. Think of these as your star wide receivers. (Okay, I'm done with the football metaphor now.)

Calendula

Calendula, also called pot marigold, grows great during the spring and fall. This is a beautiful flowering herb, so it won't surprise you to learn that it has a scent that can repel pests. It also attracts aphids, but don't let that stop you from growing calendula. It'll distract all those aphids that would otherwise find your leafy greens and fruiting plants.

Marigolds

Marigolds deter pests like aphids, nematodes, cabbage moths, and whiteflies while attracting tons of beneficial insects. I plant marigolds in pretty much all of my client's gardens for its pest control benefits. I recommend sticking with French marigolds or another variety that's low-growing in your raised beds.

Nasturtiums

Like calendula, nasturtiums actually attract pests to their leaves. They're the perfect trap crop to keep pests off your leafy greens. And don't worry—these plants can take the pest pressure.

What Would a Raised Bed Filled with Kale & Good Companion Plants Look Like?

The sample planting plan below is for a 4' x 4' raised garden bed during the cool growing season. I've got pansies in each corner of the raised bed for color and to attract beneficial insects. I bookended them with some chives. I've got rows of radishes on each side of the bed, where they'll get plenty of sun.

The middle of the bed will host three kale plants, surrounded by tons of fast-growing lettuce plants. I added a row of green onions as bouncers on either side.

This bed is exactly what I mean when I say playing offense against pests, and it'll also produce a ton of delicious things to harvest throughout the season.

Can You Grow Kale with Other Brassicas?

You may have noted that some cool season favorites have been missing so far, namely cabbage, arugula, and broccoli. These plants are all in the same family as kale, the Brassicaceae family. You can grow other brassicas with your kale (I certainly do), but do keep in mind that they'll attract the same pests and compete for the same nutrients in the soil.

If you want to grow kale and cabbage, let's say, you might consider spreading them out a bit so they're not right next to each other. That being said, you can see in the picture below that I plant kale and cabbage right next to each other in my own garden. If you have great soil to begin with, you can get away with growing things that would normally compete for nutrients right next to each other, at least in my experience.

The exception here might be broccoli. It's an allelopathic plant. That just means it releases chemicals that can stunt the growth of other brassicas growing nearby.

Fill Your Garden with Leaves, Roots, & Fruit!

I hope this helps you grow lots of good neighbors for kale to maximize your growing space and keep pests away. Growing leafy greens like kale with your favorite herbs, alliums, root crops, and flowers keeps your garden productive and exciting because there's always something to harvest and tend.

Thanks for being here and helping to make gardening ordinary!

Sources

African Journal of Agricultural Research

Research Gate