Companion planting in gardening and agriculture is the planting of different crops in proximity for the benefit of both plants such as pest control, pollination, providing habitat for beneficial creatures, maximizing use of space, and to otherwise increase crop productivity. Companion planting is a form of poly-culture. Companion planting is used by farmers and gardeners in both industrialized and developing countries for many reasons. Many of the modern principles of companion planting were present many centuries ago in cottage gardens in England and forest gardens in Asia, and thousands of years ago in Mesoamerica.
With every perfect pair there is also a disastrous couple. Unfortunately, it is not a good idea to plant strawberry by potatoes or even in the same location where potatoes were once yielded. Potatoes have a problem with verticillium susceptibility, which can cross-contaminate and kill strawberry plants.
Verticillium wilt is a wilt disease of over 350 species of eudicot are a monophyletic, monophyletic is a group of organisms which form a clade, meaning that it consists of an ancestral species, of flowering plants that had been called tricolpates, a name which refers to the grooved structure of the pollen, and all its descendants plants caused by a soil-borne imperfect fungus or genus Verticillium.
Growing Condition Differences:
Strawberry plants require full sun, warm weather spring/ summer and require 1 – 2 inches of water per week. Regular watering is especially important while the fruit is forming, from early bloom to the end of harvest.
To plant strawberries make a hole large enough to spread out the roots. Hill the center of the hole and place the crown slightly above soil level. Spread the roots downward on the hill. Fill the hole, making sure the soil only goes halfway up the crown. A buried crown will rot.
Although potatoes require full sun as well they need a slightly drier soil, like cooler weather winter/spring and potatoes do best growing up from the eye of the seed potato, you have to mound soil upwards in order to get a decent yield of potatoes. Strawberry plants can’t have their crowns buried under the soil, so they are best planted separately.
Strawberries and potatoes are far from a match made in heaven and if planted together will in fact dual to the death!
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