Seventeen companion plants for Potato
There are seventeen surprising plants that improve the growth and quality of potatoes. You get them in any wild patch both in North and South India. They energise potatoes. They fight off certain things and attract others. They are the alchemists that transport life enhancing forces between the air and the underworld.
If you mix two or three of them together they have extra potency, one reinforces the strength of the other.
These grouplets of two or three plants are mini families, members of families within tribes of complementary plants, whose chemistry interacts with soil organism, bacteria and molecular compounds to create vigorous life in the plants they support.
You don’t have to do much for these companion plants to support your potatoes. If you want to store and keep them you must dry and powder the leaf, add ten times the amount each of ethanol and water and soak the powder at room temperature for twenty four hours. You can also filter a decoction of this kind and concentrate it using a rotary evaporator.
But if you have the plants in your garden there is no one needs to process and store anything. Chopping and dropping the leaves next to your favourite potato when you are watering them will do, and hey presto, the seed potatoes will germinate faster, they will be independent from their tuber reserves in no time, and they will develop roots and take up solutes from the earth as if their life depended on it.
If you want to take an extra step you may soak the leaves in water for 24 hours and then drop them around the potato plants. This will enhance their effectiveness.
And who are these two alchemists of the soil? Here is the list.
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This information is taken from the paper by Antara Seal et al, published in 2017, entitled Evaluation of an organic package of practice towards integrated management of Solanum tuberosum and its comparison with conventional farming in terms of yield, quality, energy efficiency and economics.
We start with none other than common milk weed, which is ideally accompanied by the not so common but nonethless quite abundant heartleaf moonseed.
Plant them as companions next to your tubers.
Chop and drop their leaves as part of your watering and mulching regime, and watch the magic in the first days of their new life on this earth.
Calotropis procera – Milk weed – Aak (आक) or Madar (मदार)
Tinospora crispa – heartleaf moonseed –padma gulancha in Bengali
Accompanying your root veggies all the way from birth to harvest and decay are a bunch of growth promoters that regulate every stage of the grand growth period. They are Henbane, Banyan and Bamboo. Grow these companions in your tuber garden and chop and drop the leaves as you water and mulch. Your plants will be healthy and strong.
Hyoscyamus niger – Henbane – Khurasani ajwain
Banyan tree – Bardag
Bamboo – Dendrocalamus strictus – बांस (Bans)
To keep your plants free of fungus by activating the biosynthesis of phenolic compounds that kill of fungal spores, chop and drop the milk weed, again, this time along with Holy Basil and Doob grass. Make sure to chop and drop all the Holy Basil you have! It stimulates root function, activates micro flora around the root zone and enhances root cation exchange capacity.
Tulasi – Holy basil
Doob grass
To increase potassium absorption and increase tuber pressure, chop and drop the leaves of ginger, false black pepper, and Malabar nut.
Ginger
Embelia ribes – False black pepper – Vaividang or Baibidang or Vidanga in Sanskrit
Adhatoda vasica – Malabar nut
There are also a group of plants that activate the direct utilisation of atmospheric N and balance the quantity of nitrogen uptake. They are milk weed, again, and this time it is mixed with bamboo, another plant we have used before, and the leaves or flowers or both of the silk cotton tree.
Bombax malabaricum – silk cotton tree – Semal
Crepe ginger leaves and Indian Ipecac are important companions in your tuber garden too, never leave them out. They improve plant transport and so deliver essential substances to the plant for all sorts of important internal functions.
Costas speciosus – crepe ginger
Tylophora indica – Indian Ipecac – Antmool
Chop and drop the leaves of yellow fruit night shade and Indian birthwort to improve the movement of solutions and provide systemic presence, giving structural integrity to your plants. Yes. Yellow fruit night shade is not a weed.
Solanum xanthocarpum – yellow fruit nightshade, Kantkari, Choti Kateri
Aristolochia indica – Indian birthwort, Hookbel, Ishwaramooli
The last two plants in this list are leaves of the unassuming country mallow combined with the leaves of Indian barberry. They improves starch synthesis for a delicious firm and starchy potato.
Sida cordifolia – Country Mallow – Bala, Khareti
Berberis asiatica – Indian barberry – दारू हल्दी (Daruhaldi)
