To me, the very best time to grow in the garden is the cool season. Carrots are so easy to tend once they’re planted and thinned out, and then you can also enjoy all these delicious herbs and leafy greens growing alongside them. Here are my favorite things to plant with carrots.

CARROTS AND HERBS

I like to plant carrots along the edges of my raised beds, next to low-growing perennial herbs that won’t block sunlight. These herbs—rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme, lavender, and mint—have really strong smelling leaves (that’s why we love them, right?) that can mask the scent of carrots from pests like carrot root flies, which use scent to locate their next meal.

My favorite herb to toss on roasted carrots is rosemary, so it’s also great to have fresh rosemary leaves on hand when I harvest my carrots.

CARROTS AND LEAFY GREENS

I love growing carrots with leafy greens like lettuce, spinach, arugula, kale, cabbage, mustard greens, and Swiss chard. These plants all like shorter days, cooler temps, and plenty of moisture.

Small leafy greens like lettuce and spinach have complementary root systems with carrots, which allows you to use your growing space more efficiently. Basically, carrots grow mostly underground, while these leafy greens grow mostly above ground. That means their shallow roots won’t get in the way of the carrot taproots, and their leafy canopy can help keep moisture in the soil and deter weeds.

Carrots are perfect for growing with frost-tolerant greens when it’s too cold for most other veggies. You could have a carrot and spinach bed growing well before your last frost in the spring.

CARROTS AND FRUITING PLANTS

The best fruiting plant to grow in the same beds as carrots is peas, mostly because they have similar temperature preferences. Peas, like carrots, can be planted as soon as your soil is workable in the spring.

Other fruiting plants like cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers, grow well with carrots, but they’ll typically only share your garden beds while you’re transitioning from the cool season to the warm season and vice versa.

CARROTS AND ALLIUMS

Alliums are my go-to companion plant group for pretty much anything you might want to grow in the garden, carrots included. I always recommend planting chives, garlic, onions, leeks, or shallots next to your carrots and leafy greens. The reason being, these members of the onion plant family have a strong scent that repels pests like aphids and carrot flies. A couple green onion plants, for example, can protect your carrots from carrot rust flies.

Chives are even said to improve the flavor of carrots growing nearby. Chives and green onions both have shallow little roots, so you don’t have to worry about underground bulbs competing with carrot roots underground. When in doubt, add some chives or green onions to your garden.

CARROTS AND FLOWERS

Don’t forget to add some flowers to each and every one of your garden beds to attract beneficial insects. Some of my favorite flowers that can handle cool temps are calendula, chamomile, and pansies. Once you’ve passed your last frost date in the spring, you can also add beautiful nasturtiums and marigolds to your carrot bed. Marigolds are well-known for their ability to repel a wide range of garden pests, including nematodes, aphids, and whiteflies.

What Would a Raised Bed Filled with Carrots and Good Companion Plants Look Like?

Carrots can take a while to germinate and grow, so I like to give them a large portion of a raised bed all to themselves or plant them along the outer edge.

The planting plan below for a 4′ x 4′ raised bed has violas and parsley in each corner, and then rows of carrots around the bed with some garlic mixed in for organic pest control. Six broccoli plants take up the middle of the bed. You could probably do two rounds of carrots around the outer portion of the bed while you’re waiting on that broccoli to form a nice head.

Here’s a planting plan that devotes most of the 4′ x 4′ raised bed to carrots. You still have some herbs and flowers so that you’re not committing the sin of monocropping (having just one thing all to itself in a bed). But this will get you over 100 carrots from this one small garden bed.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to plant all your rows of carrots at once. You can save some space and plant more carrot seeds every two to three weeks for a more continuous root harvest. You can pull carrots all season long if you plan it right. Just make sure to label the spaces where you’ve planted rows of carrots so that you don’t forget and double-plant while you’re waiting on the sprouts to pop up.

Can Carrots and Radishes Be Grown Together?

I remember reading that carrots and radishes grow well together when I first started gardening. The theory is that radishes germinate much faster than carrots. The radish greens will shade the soil and prevent it from drying out during the critical period when the delicate carrot seedlings are trying to push their way through to the surface. Then, by the time the carrot taproots need space to grow, the faster-growing radishes will already be ready to harvest.

I thought that made a lot of sense, but it did not work out accordingly in my own garden. The radish tops were so large that they shaded the carrots way too early in their growth. I did end up getting a great radish harvest, but the carrots, unfortunately, never recovered from their days living in the shadow of their radish companions.

Lesson learned. Now I plant each of them separately in their own bed or space them apart in the garden so the carrots don’t miss any of that sunlight they need for speedy growth.

Can You Grow Carrots Near Tomatoes?

Carrots and tomatoes make okay bedmates as long as you keep two things in mind.

The first thing is to plant a buffer between your carrots and tomatoes. The roots of tomato plants can stunt the growth of the carrot taproot. Medium-size plants like mustard greens, collard greens, kale, and Swiss chard would make great buffers.

The second thing is that these plants prefer different temperature ranges. Carrots, again, like things nice and cool, while tomatoes like warm and sunny days. They’ll usually only share the same space in the spring when you’re waiting on your carrots to be ready for harvest and are planting out your tomato seedlings. And then again in the late summer or fall when your tomatoes are finishing up and you go ahead and sow some carrot seeds in preparation for dropping temps.