So we bought 2 basil plants.

Question:
Is it okay to plant the basil in the same pot as the tomato (we have one tomato plant in a pot about 20" across and 16" deep)?
Or should we plant the basil in a seperate pot and put it next to the tomato plant?

I imagine it would work better if I planted it right in the same pot, but if I do, will it take up too much nutrients or otherwise cause the tomato plant to suffer?

Marigolds are great at attracting spidermites.

I think these are two old sayings (basil and marigolds)that facts don't back up.

Also, basil requires less water than tomatoes. Seperate pots is better IMO.

Even if basil doesn't repel whiteflies, it won't hurt anything to plant them with your tomatoes, though bigdaddyj may have a point about different water needs for growing them in containers.

There are lots of internet sites that are just downright wrong about the insect repellant nature of some plants and herbs. They usually have something like "companion planting" in the title, or I've seen the same kind of stuff on some seed company sites that want to sell you all kinds of "natural" insect repellants -- I think they've made up their seed lists from those "companion planting" pages and concluded there's a market out there, particularly among those who want to garden organically!

The wrong information shows up on one site and other sites copy it directly, spreading the misinformation. It never hurts to check things like that here, which you've done, so you don't count on something that doesn't work! You can also look for sites that seem dull and dry but have researched these kinds of claims.

Then you can always test the claims yourself.

I liked that they became a natural mulch for the garden bed, but regarding white flies, it was odd.

There was a white fly infestation in my tomato bed for about 2 weeks... when i would go to prune, everywhere I disturbed, it would look like it was snowing little white flies everywhere, however they kept only to the marigolds. I had no white fly problems with my tomatoes last year. Strange.

I don't know if the marigolds attracted the white flies to begin with? Or deterred them from the tomatoes? dunno.

I'll be planting marigolds and basil in the tomato bed this year too, though spacing things out a bit better this year. I too loved all the honeybees that liked to visit the basil when I let it flower.

They are a serious pest, taking out a lot of my tomato plants and cutting production tremendously. I have tried neem and other "Green" products but I'm thinking about looking into pesticides. For the last 12 years I have only been organic but this is too big of a problem.

How's that for trying to make my latent post sound timely? :)