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Companion planting strawberries is one of the best ways to naturally improve your strawberry harvests, getting larger yields and bigger berries, and having fewer pest and disease problems.
There’s a certain sense of satisfaction that comes with growing your own strawberries. Not only do they taste better because they come from your own garden, but they don’t require a lot of time and effort for good results. This means that even if you’re a beginner when it comes to gardening, you can grow your own strawberry patch without a lot of back-breaking labor.
However, if you’re looking to produce the best strawberries, you’ll have to put in a little more work. Thankfully, this can be as simple as learning about and planting companion plants that can actually work alongside strawberries.
When we think about what grows well with strawberries, we’re talking about beneficial plants that actively contribute to the health of your strawberries. The best companion plants for strawberries keep harmful bugs away and enrich the soil so you’ll enjoy stronger plants and bigger berries. As an added bonus, some plants — such as herbs and beans — may even offer good eats in the kitchen.
Important Info for Companion Planting Strawberries
In order to understand what makes a good companion plant for strawberries, you need to think about how strawberries grow.
For starters, strawberries need full sunlight; otherwise, you’ll get lots of leaves and not so many berries. Your strawberries may also get diseases, too, if the conditions aren’t right. Plants that don’t do well with full sunlight won’t do well when planted near strawberries.
RELATED READING: Find out why your strawberry leaves are curling here.
With proper sunlight, strawberry plants can be prolific. They send out runners, tendrils that quickly cover ground and fill empty spaces with new plants. This means they can suck up nutrients from the soil and crowd out slow-growing or weaker plants that just can’t compete.
When determining what grows well with strawberries, you’ll be looking for plants that help with fertilization, don’t need a lot of real estate, attract beneficial insects, and don’t attract pests that can damage your berries.
The Best Strawberry Companion Plants
Whether you’re planting starts, growing strawberries from scraps or seed, or managing existing strawberry plant crops, you can enjoy stronger, healthier results when you learn what to plant alongside strawberries.
Borage
Hands down, borage is one of the best strawberry companion plants. Also known as starflower, this herb has pretty purple flowers and fuzzy green leaves, both of which are edible and touted to offer medicinal benefits.
The reason borage and strawberries go so well together is because borage naturally repels insects that like to munch on strawberry leaves and berries. Borage’s flowers also attract beneficial insects, like bees, helping with pollination and the overall proliferation of your strawberries, as well as predatory insects like praying mantis that love to make meals of other harmful bugs.
Caraway
Caraway is an herb with long stems and distinct white flowers, with seeds that are used in lots of recipes, from rye bread to sausage. It’s an excellent companion plant for strawberries because it also attracts predatory insects that feast on weevils and other pests that are harmful to your crops.
It doesn’t take up too much real estate, either, so when you plant strawberries, it makes good sense to interplant some caraway, too. Plus, of course, you can harvest and dry the caraway seeds, too, for use in the kitchen.
Bush Beans
Bush beans pull triple duty when companion planting with strawberries. As companion plants in your strawberry patch, bush beans keep beetles away so they don’t eat up your berries, but they also play host to microbes that pull nitrogen from the air and convert it to a usable form in the soil — more nutrients in the ground means healthier plants all around.
This is called nitrogen fixing, and strawberries, like most plants, love nitrogen. It helps you get bigger plants and healthier, jucier berries. Of course, these companion plants also produce delicious beans that you can use in numerous recipes.
Lupin
Lupin is a gorgeous flower to plant next to strawberries, and one of the best companion plants for strawberries. You may be surprised to learn that this colorful beauty is actually part of the legume family. It produces plump beans that are popular as snacks around the world. In your garden, lupins help strawberry plants by repelling beetles, attracting bees, and hosting nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
As lupins grow tall, they don’t take up a huge amount of floor space, and they’re big enough and tall enough not to be easily overwhelmed a fast-growing strawberry patch. Plus, they can cope with full sun and, because of their growth habit, they don’t cast a huge amount of shade or create too much leafy growth that it inhibits airflow. All of these traits make lupins fantastic strawberry companion plants.
Garlic and Onion
Garlic and onion are part of a strong-smelling family of plants that can help your strawberry crops by masking their enticing scent. When bugs that like strawberries get a whiff of garlic or onion, they’ll move along. An added bonus, you can skip the grocery store and use your garlic and onion yields when cooking.
Strawberry plants can’t easily crowd out onion and garlic, either, because the bulk of the plant grows below ground, and the thin stalks grow upward, so don’t take up much floor space. The strawberry plants can grow all around the stems of the alliums without depriving them of light or nutrients, and the alliums, in turn, don’t cast shade or inhibit airflow for the growing strawberries.
Marigolds
If you’ve read my other companion planting posts, you’ll know I’m a big fan of companion planting marigolds. And they make fabulous companion plants for strawberry plants.
The humble marigold attracts beneficial insects. Yes, they attract pollinators, but they also draw in predatory insects, particularly hoverflies. Another reason they’re such good companion plants for strawberries is that they repel root knot nematodes, which are incredibly destructive to strawberry plants. Marigolds also have a strong scent that hides the smell of the juicy berries.
Nasturtiums
Nasturtiums are the perfect trap crop and can be happily interplanted in your strawberry bed or around the edge. These peppery little plants, with their brightly colored flowers are adored by aphids. So, the aphids migrate to the nasturtiums and love them so much, that they won’t migrate to the strawberry plants.
Plus, their bright blossoms and distinctive scent attract beneficial insects, like hoverflies, lacewings, and ladybugs that all feast on aphids.
Yarrow
Yarrow benefits your strawberry plants when companion planting by attracting beneficial insects. This tall herb, with its small, bright flowers and pungent smell attracts pollinators and predatory insects to help you maximize strawberry yield and significantly reduce the number of pests, such as aphids.
Yarrow plants make good companion plants for strawberries because they’re nitrogen fixers, creating a home for nitrogen fixing bacteria that makes plenty of nitrogen available in the soil for the nearby strawberries to take up as needed.
The roots of yarrow also help to improve soil structure and drainage, both of which are critical to healthy strawberry plants and optimal fruit production.
Chrysanthemums
These flowering plants are great companion plants for strawberries. They need similar conditions, including well-drained by lightly moist soil and at least 6 hours of full sun per day. And mums keep away all kinds of bugs, including root nematodes and Japanese beetles from your strawberry plants.
CAUTION! Chrysanthemums are toxic to animals, so don’t plant them if you have pets. As well as being dangerous to dogs and cats, they’re also dangerous to humans if ingested, so if you have little kids that enjoy the garden, avoid planting mums.
Certain Leafy Greens
Leafy greens like lettuce and spinach may seem like a strange answer to what to plant with strawberries. After all, they don’t attract beneficial insects as they don’t have flowers, and they don’t have a strong scent to keep pests away.
However, their broad leaves do an excellent job of hiding ripe juicy berries from birds that are looking for a sweet treat, so they do a pretty good job as companion plants for strawberries in patches with plenty of airflow and in a strawberry bed that isn’t netted or caged.
What Not to Plant With Strawberries
Equally as important as learning about good companion plants is learning what not to plant near strawberries. In some cases, certain plants may spread disease to your strawberry plants, ruining your crop. In other cases, it may be the strawberries themselves that aren’t good neighbors.
Tomatoes
Strawberries and tomatoes are far from being mortal enemies in the garden. As a matter of fact, despite coming from different plant families and having different growing habits, they don’t directly harm each other — they even have some things in common. Unfortunately, it’s these shared traits that can spell disaster.
For starters, both are susceptible to Verticillium wilt, a fungal disease that will ultimately kill the strawberry plant and the tomato plant. This means that if one plant contracts the disease, it can easily spread it to the other, and wipe out both crops in just a few weeks.
Another problem is that strawberries and tomatoes look similar, so pests and birds that find one will be happy to snack on both. For these reasons, you should plant strawberries and tomatoes far away from one another. While you’re at it, do the same with other plants that are plagued by Verticillium, including chrysanthemum, eggplant, melon, mint, peppers, potatoes, and roses.
Cabbage
While cabbage and other plants in the cabbage family won’t harm your strawberry plants, the same can’t be said for the other way around. As strawberry plants like to stretch out, sending numerous runners to take root and form new plants, they’ll crowd out plants like bok choy, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, collard greens, and kale.
Strawberries keep cabbage-family plants from growing properly and could even kill them. So, while plants in the cabbage family aren’t bad companion plants for strawberries, strawberry plants make bad companion plants for cabbages.
If you’re growing strawberries and cabbages, but your own garden is small, you can always try growing strawberries vertically or in containers while planting your cabbage family plants in the ground.
RELATED ARTICLE: Ways to Grow Strawberries
Companion Planting Strawberries For the Biggest, Juiciest Berries
Strawberry plants are prolific growers, but there are threats that can hamper their growth. Bugs and birds, in particular, are a problem as they can eat up your berries before you get the chance to reap your rewards.
Thankfully, there are a variety of strawberry companion plants that naturally work alongside your strawberry plants to keep bugs at bay and improve soil quality.
Consider planting some of our recommendations above in your strawberry patch to enjoy bigger, better fruit, without the need for chemicals. Go organic for some really tasty strawberries.