Companion Plants For Growing Hops

[Wolfy]

I'm about to start making a new hop garden and have been looking at which companion plants would be beneficial for the hops.
The best information I've found so far is from the Simple Earth Hops website, but there was a little bit of info on the HBT forums and a couple of other places.

The idea is the companion plants will either attract beneficial insects, act as a pest trap (the bugs eat the companion plant not the hops), or they will repel various unwanted bugs.

This is the list I've come up with so far:
Calendula (Pot Marigolds) - pest trap & repellent
Coriander - attractant, repellent (aphids)
Dill - attractant, pest trap, repellent (aphids and others)
Nasturtium - attractant, pest trap, repellent (aphids and others)
Tansy - attractant, repellent (flying insects)
Yarrow - attractant, (also enhances essential oil production)
Hyssop - attractant, repellent (aphids)
Echinacea - attractant

Seed for everything on the list is available cheaply ($1-3 per pack) and easily (on ebay).

Has anyone - here in Australia - used companion plants with their hops before and if so what worked for you and what did not?

 

[zebba]

I had major issues with aphids on my coriander this summer Wolfy. None on my grapes, none on the roses, but all over the coriander. Didn't get anything out of them cause of it - hit 'em with pyrethrum, they die, two days later they are back.

I just did a quick google and it appears that half the world think coriander repels aphids, the other half think it attracts them. Maybe that's a good thing though, I dunno, just my personal, relatively worthless experience from just around the corner

 

[RobB]

I don't grow hops, but I like companion planting around my vegetables.

Marigolds (tagetes) are reputed to deter root nemetodes. I'm not sure if hops suffer from nemetode attack, but it can't hurt to try.

I have found that yellow flowers and anything that flowers in a large flat head (dill, yarrow, parsley, heaps of others) bring in the hover flies. These guys are great pest eaters. Bidens ferulifolia is one yellow flowering plant which I have and it has clouds of hover flies above it. It's attractive and tough, too.

As for plants which may attract aphids, if you have the space for some cheap, sacrificial aphid attracters then they can actually be put to good use. If you have a population explosion of aphids and your plants aren't suffering, don't reach for the spray and just look the other way for a couple of weeks. It won't take long for secondary population explosion of predators to establish themselves in your garden.

I occasionally find a plant in my garden which is encrusted with aphids. Two weeks later, the same plant will be free of aphids and dotted with empty aphid shells which have been eaten out by parasitic wasps. As you probably know, once you spray, you kill both pest and predator and then have to build up this cycle again from scratch.

 

[Bizier]

Great link.

I will add that to the links in the neglected How to Grow article.

 

[pdilley]

Companion planting is good but not as effective if you spray insecticides. The majority of insects (more than 90%) are not destructive or are predators to the harmful insects but spray for pests and you kill all the beneficial and predator insects in one go - spraying is like dropping the A-Bomb on your garden) -- you are going to have to let the system rebalance itself as well so you'll have the occasional outbreak of something as the system regrows itself and rebalances it with more predators to that particular pest thats growing out of control. However, they don't usually just eat aphids but nibble on pollens and nectars as well. So you need to take the whole nutritional needs and quantities of plants for predator insects into your grand design. Otherwise its like the lucrative market for predator insects in garden shops, sell them ladybugs and then when released they starve on the lack of plants in your garden and buggar off somewhere with greener pastures so to speak. You also need to bring in bird attracting plants, lots of footholds for birds around in the plants, lizard habitats and get everything involved in your integrated pest management system. Turn pests into predator poo and then recycled back into your soils for the hops to utilise.

Here is my super duper companion everything chart permaculture companion planting related:
View attachment Permaculture_Guide_to_Companion_Planting.pdf


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[cozmocracker]

nice chart brewer pete, thanks for posting.

 

[Wolfy]

Here is my super duper companion everything chart permaculture companion planting related:
View attachment 39419

Thanks for the chart, but if you designed it why does it not mention hops!

 

[Exile]

I am currently looking into companion planting now before my rhizomes take off, and found this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pest-repelling_plants

Has anyone used dill?, looks like it will repel aphids & spider mites.