A 4x8 salsa garden
A single crop is rarely the reason someone starts a garden. Wanting to make something is. This bed is built backwards from a jar of salsa: four tomatoes, four peppers, a row of onions and a row of cilantro, in a standard 4x8 raised bed.
The basil and marigold squares aren't filler. Basil is the classic tomato and pepper neighbour, and marigolds are grown alongside tomatoes for root-knot nematodes. Putting them in the second row means every tomato and pepper has one adjacent.
The layout
North is the top row. Each square is one foot.
| Tomato (north-west corner) | Tomato | Tomato | Tomato | Pepper | Pepper | Pepper | Pepper |
| Basil | Basil | Marigold | Marigold | Basil | Basil | Marigold | Marigold |
| Onion | Onion | Onion | Onion | Onion | Onion | Onion | Onion |
| Cilantro | Cilantro | Cilantro | Cilantro | Cilantro | Cilantro | Cilantro | Cilantro |
Open this plan in the Garden Designer →
It opens with the bed already laid out. Free, no account, nothing to install. Change anything you like: the designer will flag bad neighbours as you move plants and work out sowing dates for your own zone.
What's in it
Why these sit next to each other
- Tomato and Basil: Widely reputed to improve tomato flavor and repel pests, but a multi-year, garden-scale controlled trial found no consistent taste preference in blind tests, and no evidence basil reduced pest pressure — treat this as one of companion planting's least-supported popular claims.
- Tomato and Marigold: UF/IFAS Extension confirms French marigold is effective against a wide range of root-knot nematode species — a real, documented effect, not folklore. The insect-pest-deterrent half of this claim is less well documented.
- Pepper and Basil: Reputed to repel aphids and improve pepper growth nearby, but a controlled garden trial testing this same claim on a related crop found no pest-reduction benefit from basil, and actually found higher pest counts on the basil-companioned plants — treat this pairing as unproven, not as a working pest deterrent.
- Pepper and Onion: Reputed to deter many common pepper pests, though this specific pairing hasn't been tested the way onion/carrot pest-masking has — treat it as garden tradition.
- Onion and Tomato: Onion scent can deter tomato pests.
Companion planting is a mix of well-evidenced effects and garden tradition. We say which is which on each plant profile rather than presenting all of it as settled.
How to work this bed
- Cilantro bolts fast in heat. Sow a quarter of the row every two weeks rather than the whole row at once, or you'll get one week of cilantro and then a month of coriander seed.
- Onions want to go in early and stay put. They're the one row here you plant once and don't touch.
- If you want heat, swap some of the pepper squares for a hotter variety rather than adding squares. Four pepper plants is already more peppers than most households use fresh.
Timing it for where you live
Nothing above says when, because that depends entirely on your hardiness zone. Open the plan in the designer and it produces a week-by-week schedule for your own zone, or look the crops up individually on the planting calendar.
Other ready-made plans
- A beginner's 4x4 square-foot garden
- A kids' first garden
- A cut-and-come-again salad bed
- A high-yield 4x8 bed for a small urban plot
- A no-conflict 3x6 beginner bed
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One 4x8 bed that grows everything in a jar of salsa: tomatoes, peppers, onions and cilantro, with basil and marigold worked in as companions.
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