Tomato Guild

A summer bed built around tomatoes, the crop every kitchen garden starts with, for USDA zones 4 to 9 or anywhere with three frost-free months. Tomatoes are the centrepiece on tall stakes or cages. Carrots and parsley run in the strip beside them, loosening the soil and, once left to bolt, feeding the hoverflies and parasitic wasps that keep aphids and hornworms down. Borage and calendula are the insectary and the mineral pump, chopped and dropped as mulch after flowering; cosmos carries the bloom through to frost. Garlic rings the base of each tomato to confuse pests and hold back fungal disease. Peanuts are the living floor, fixing nitrogen and shading the soil through the heat of summer. Mulch heavily, water at the root, and never let the soil bake bare.