An Easy Two-step Plan to Grow More Vegetables in Less Land
Here's a simple strategy to grow more vegetables in less land in a sustainable garden. It's called Intensive Successional Planting (ISP). It's a refined - easier to use - form of French intensive gardening. In fact, it's a combination of several ingenious sustainable gardening ideas. And it's highly effective!
The first thing you do is to set small plants between large ones and set out rapdily growing or tiny fruit and vegetables between the massive ones to pull early as 'catch crops'.
That's just a basic description of ISP but these steps make a good start. The fundamental requirement for intensive organic gardening by this plan is good and fertile soil. Plus a hatred of wasted space. The natural universe abhors naked soil, and so should we!
Step 1. Mix your crop varieties
Intercropping has been called the science of raising different plant species close together so that each species makes best use of the soil and none stifle - but all complement - the other. So in the perfect case we'd fit together a deep root crop with a leafy crop, along with plants of varying canopy width, plus a vining plant with a bush crop - all in the same small plot. If we do that, the thick multi-level planting not only increases the amount of food produced but it also suppresses annual weeds.
Companion planting adds another clever touch to intercropping. Many of the tales about companion planting contradict each other (and are probably false). For instance, do tomatoes hate brassica or love them? Authorities are in two minds. But some plant likes and hates are well attested.
For example, alliums such as onions, garlic and leeks do stunt legumes like beans and peas, as many gardeners know too well. (However, some have successfully grown runner beans beside onions for years, with no problem.)
True, it is risky to grow potatoes or aubergines alongside tomatoes - or dill beside carrots - because both share the same families, invite similar pests and can impart disease to each other. And so on.
Why companion planting sometimes succeeds
If other truisms of companion planting seem to work at times, it's probably because the plants use elements of the land that their partners don't. For instance:
It does work to grow medium-height climbing peas up jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes), maize or sunflowers. And to intercrop those lofty plants with cucurbits and squash, that sprawl into the sun, or with dwarf beans - that don't mind a little shade. And to plant dwarf beans or celery among brassica like winter cabbages, outdoor cucumbers, cauliflower, kale or Swiss chard.
You can also grow dwarf peas between dwarf beans, so the beans support the peas. And you can further intercrop the gaps between with parsnips and main-crop carrots.
A great idea is to plant onions among strawberries. The onions don't seem to mind the strawberries' encroaching low foliage. Onion sets can be put in almost anywhere to fill a gap, except possibly among legumes.
Most vegetables will co-exist happily in any fertile well-drained plot, slightly acid to neutral (pH6 - 7) if the soil is not rich with new manure. (Only heavy feeders like squash and tomatoes, rhubarb and sweet corn can survive in fresh manure.) So inter-cropping makes a lot of sense.
Second step. Catchcrop with fast growing plants
Catchcrops are intercrops that you pull out before the main crop matures. For example, why not plant early golfball-sized beetroot between rows of potatoes? The potato haulm protects the beets from sun and wind, while the beet leaves retain moisture in the potato rows. It provides a natural mulch.
Why not set beetroot among main-crop carrots? (Beetroot leaves are said to shelter the carrots from carrot fly.)
What about... small early stub-rooted carrots or turnips between broad beans and garlic? When the main vegetables need space (and alliums particularly hate being congested, unless they're among strawberries), the catchcrops have been lifted.
Or... quickly-grown lettuce or aragula (rocket) set among any main-crop plant - like rhubarb, potatoes, jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes), strawberries or cabbages?
Almost any plant can be raised as a catch crop, if you harvest it before it's mature. Of course, you'll find that's when it's at its sweetest. You can grow even tomatoes as a catchcrop! If you sow only ultra-early varieties (like Siberian, Scotia, Alaskan Fancy, Sasha's Altai, etc) they may mature in as little as 60 days, with good light, and - in temperate climes - can be harvested by early August.
You can grow the new tomato plants right up against sweet corn, even winter cabbage, and set them out together in early June. When the main crops need room, cull the tomatoes.
Do you need a big plot for these 'intensive growing' plans? Not at all. Using the ISP approach to intensive organic gardening, you can grow around 35lb of vegetables per annum in a plot little bigger than a frisbee!
About the Author
Dr John Yeoman PhD is chairman of the information resource for natural gardening ideas, the Gardening Guild. You'll find dozens of ingenious tips for intensive growing - to gain more food from your soil with less expense and effort - in his big book Lazy Secrets for Natural Gardening Success. Get it entirely free now at: http://www.gardeningguild.org/lazy
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