The 7 Best Companion Plants for Zucchini

Every gardener knows the joy of a healthy zucchini plant growing abundantly in a home garden. Zucchini is a rewarding and easy-to-grow summer squash plant that produces an abundant crop. A single healthy plant can produce pounds of fruit throughout the season. But it can also attract pests, compete heavily for nutrients, and take up a lot of garden space. Fortunately, practicing companion planting with your zucchini crop and pairing it with the right neighbors can keep pests away from your plants, attract pollinators, improve soil health, and ensure a healthy harvest. Companion planting is a great way to benefit your crops and get more out of your garden. However, you need to choose the right companion plant pairings and understand how plants affect one another when grown close together.

If you're planning to grow zucchini this growing season, pair it with beneficial companions to enjoy bigger harvests, healthier plants, and fewer pest problems. Here are seven of the best plants to grow alongside zucchini and discover why they deserve a place in your garden.

1. Basil

Basil helps keep pests like whiteflies away and can even prevent mildew from spreading on zucchini leaves. Many plants, like basil, have a strong odor that repels harmful insects. Strong scents can confuse or repel certain insect pests.

How Basil Helps Your Zucchini

• Basil is a good choice to grow with your zucchini plants because it helps repel pests such as aphids. It is also compact and easy to grow, so it fits easily into small garden spaces.
• Basil also benefits your garden soil, so you can plant it even if you're not a fan of its flavor. When mixed into the soil, it increases the availability of essential nutrients such as manganese, zinc, and potassium.
• It also helps suppress weed growth and the proliferation of harmful bacteria.
• Basil is a versatile herb used in many dishes. You can make pesto with plenty of basil or add it to tomato-based Italian sauces.

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2. Dill

This is a fast-growing, aromatic herb and a valuable crop for your summer squash bed. One of the most important roles companion plants play is helping repel harmful insects that can ruin your garden. Dill is an excellent companion plant for zucchini because it attracts beneficial insects that prey on some pests that target your zucchini. It acts like a magnet for beneficial insects such as parasitic wasps, hoverflies, lacewings, and ladybugs. These beneficial insects help control many common zucchini pests naturally.

How Dill Helps Your Zucchini

• Dill is a fragrant herb that repels pests like cucumber beetles and flea beetles by attracting beneficial insects.
• Dill also attracts beneficial predators that feed on aphids. Those tiny insects eat the nutrient-rich sap in zucchini leaves and reproduce faster than rodents.
• Dill's tiny yellow flowers also attract pollinators throughout the growing season.
• Many gardeners swear that having dill nearby zucchini seedlings improves their growth.

3. Beans and Peas

Zucchini plants are heavy feeders. They have large root systems and expansive leaves, which require a significant amount of nitrogen from the soil to thrive throughout the summer. Beans and peas are nitrogen-fixing plants that make the soil more fertile for your zucchini plants.

How they Helps Your Zucchini

• Beans and peas work with soil microbes to make nitrogen available to plants. As the beans grow, they enrich the surrounding root zone and feed your hungry zucchini.
• Nitrogen availability in soil supports the leafy growth of your zucchini plants. It also reduces the need for fertilizer, saving you money and lowering your environmental footprint.
• Pole beans or vining peas on a trellis are perfect to grow with zucchini because they grow up and away, while zucchini spreads out below. Bush beans and peas don't work as well space-wise with zucchini.

4. Corn (Zea mays)

Corn and zucchini have been grown together for centuries, particularly in traditional planting systems throughout North America. If you want to try a historical gardening technique, try the famous Three Sisters planting practice, which pairs corn, climbing beans, and squash in a brilliant display of companion planting.

How It Helps Your Zucchini

• In this planting method, sweet corn acts as a living trellis because it grows vertically. While zucchini does not climb like its winter squash cousins, it still benefits from the shelter corn provides.
• The tall, sturdy stalks of corn provide a dappled shade in the hottest hours of mid-to-late summer. It prevents your zucchini leaves from scorching and reduces overall heat stress.
• The massive leaves of the zucchini plant carpet the floor and keep the shallow roots of the corn cool and moist.
• Corn also supports pollinator activity and increases overall garden productivity.

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5. Borage

Borage is a Mediterranean native herb that's commonly known as the bee bush, a name it has earned. This striking herb and ornamental plant feature fuzzy green leaves and beautiful, star-shaped blue blossoms that have a subtle cucumber flavor.

If you want to maximize pollinator appeal in your garden, borage is an excellent choice to grow alongside zucchini. Additionally, borage has a deep taproot that pulls up minerals from deep within the soil, making it an excellent mulch at the end of the season to enrich your topsoil.

How Borage Helps Your Zucchini

• Borage is one of the best flowering plants for attracting pollinators. Its flowers produce a high volume of nectar, ensuring bees, hoverflies, and predatory wasps visit your garden. A single borage plant can feed a lot of pollinators.
• Borage also attracts bumblebees and honeybees and will keep producing nectar even during the colder months. So, it can continue to welcome pollinators long after you've harvested your zucchini. More bees mean higher zucchini pollination rates, which prevent flower drop and ensure straight, perfectly formed squash.
• Borage has edible leaves and gorgeous flowers that can add color to your garden and summer recipes. It tastes a little like cucumber, and its star-shaped periwinkle-blue flowers can be added to salads or used as a savory garnish for your favorite cocktail.
• Borage acts as a natural deterrent against cucumber beetles and tomato hornworms.

6. Marigolds

In addition to herbs and vegetables, you can also mix ornamentals in with your zucchini plants. Ornamentals make the garden more pleasant to look at. French marigolds are traditional staples of the organic vegetable garden, and for very good reason. They are cheerful garden flowers that benefit your garden.

How Marigolds Help Your Zucchini

• The unique, pungent scent of marigolds is highly effective at hiding the aroma of your zucchini plants. This makes it harder for flying pests like squash bugs and whiteflies to find your crop. Marigolds also help control other microbes, such as fungi and bacteria.
• Marigolds are a good choice to grow with zucchini because they are easy to grow, thrive in vegetable gardens, and can help deter soil-dwelling pests, such as nematodes.
• Marigolds protect zucchini from pests that attack below the soil, like nematodes, and pests that attack aboveground, like squash bugs and even rabbits. These flowers release a compound called pyrethrum, which is basically nature's bug spray.

7. Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums are one of the best companion plants for zucchini. These colorful annual flowers serve multiple roles in the backyard garden.

Their bright flowers attract bees and other pollinators that are essential for zucchini fruit production. At the same time, nasturtiums act as a trap crop to draw aphids and certain beetles away from zucchini plants. Plant nasturtiums around the outer edges of zucchini beds for benefits.

How It Helps Your Zucchini Plant

• Nasturtiums produce a distinct, peppery aroma and have succulent leaves that are tempting to pests like aphids, whiteflies, flea beetles, and squash bugs. Their beautiful hibiscus-like flowers attract insects that manage destructive pests.
• The bold, trumpet-shaped flowers of nasturtiums are magnets for bumblebees and honeybees. Zucchini plants rely heavily on insect pollination to develop fruit, so maximizing bee traffic is essential.
• They produce edible flowers and leaves, increasing garden biodiversity.

Planting Tip

Position nasturtiums along the edges or at the corners of your zucchini garden beds so they do not get completely shaded out by the squash's massive canopy.

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Plants to Avoid Growing with Zucchini

Zucchini thrives with many companions, but some plants can cause problems that you should not grow with zucchini. Here are plants to avoid growing, as they may negatively impact plant growth and the overall health of your zucchini crop.

Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes

Tubers and tuberous roots are heavy feeders and fast growers, which means they compete with zucchini for both nutrients and space. That leads to stunted zucchini growth. They also share many soil-borne blights and insect pests. If you want to grow potatoes and zucchini, keep them in separate raised garden beds or give them a lot of space in a row garden.

Fennel

Fennel has allelopathic properties that inhibit or stunt the growth of nearby vegetables. Keep it in its own isolated metal raised bed or container.

Other Squash and Cucumbers

Planting zucchini too close to cucumbers, pumpkins, winter squash, or melons increases the risk of spreading powdery mildew and downy mildew due to poor airflow. Give these large crops plenty of room.

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The Bottom Line

Zucchini is a super productive and beginner-friendly vegetable to grow in your garden, but companion planting can make it even more productive. Companion planting is an easy way to keep your garden healthy and productive.

If you surround your zucchini with the right companions like herbs, flowers, and complementary veggies, you'll keep common cucumber pests away and harvest dozens of fruits from each plant this summer. Flowers such as borage, nasturtiums, marigolds, and sunflowers attract pollinators and beneficial insects that zucchini depend on for healthy growth. Meanwhile, vegetables and herbs like beans, basil, dill, and corn help improve soil health and maximize space.

Combine these beneficial plantings with your zucchini plants to have healthier soil, fewer pests, a stronger vegetable garden, and a truly magnificent, abundant zucchini harvest.