December 18, 2014

Good morning, I love talking about gardening! A recent conversation with a fellow gardener and the subject of companion planting was brought up. I must say the first thing that came into my mind was the inter-planting of plants to help thwart pests. It reminded me of the book “Carrots Love Tomatoes”.A book about companion planting to fight garden pests. This is not what my friend had in mind.

My friend like myself grows plants on a mature plant size grid pattern. An example would be tomatoes. I grow determinate tomatoes and the mature spacing of 18 inches(indeterminate s are a 36 inch spacing). As one can see when you set the plants out, say a 12 inch tall tomato that is buried so that only the top 3 or 4 leaves are above ground, there is a lot of open space to grow weeds.

What my friend was talking about was planting companion plants that would be harvested as the primary crop matures and fills in the open spaces. I was more familiar with the term inter-cropping. This is a very good way to boost crop production and use already prepared bed space along with holding weeds down.

I have done this on a very small scale in a very hit or miss way. Usually only because I remember to think about it. This has potential to increase production with a minimum of extra effort. Just needs a little bit of extra planning.

The kinds of crops that would work best would be greens such as lettuce, boc choy, spinach and not to forget radishes. These fast maturing crops would be harvested as the tomatoes fill in the space. What I have done is usually plant blocks of these various plants in their own designated beds. With additional planning I could get this companion planting to work for me. This could open designated bed space to other crops.

When I was only hose end watering, I would water the whole bed and could inter-crop all of the open space. Since converting to a drip system, there would be 1 foot wide strips of bed that would get regular water. In the case of the tomatoes there would be two strips of tomatoes per bed. This still is a lot of open watered bed space growing weeds until the toms fill in.

But this kind of planting does not need to only be a main crop and a sub crop that is harvested and the main crop fills in. There is the long noted planting that the Native Americans have done. It is referred to as the Three Sisters, corn, beans and squash. The corn would provide the trellis for the beans to grow and the squash would cover the ground.

Expanding on this would be planting two main crops that would also last all season but would grow in different soil depths. This could be okra and cucumbers or any other like combo of plants like this.

Since I am spending less time watering, I am going to see if I can plan out my garden successions and do some compatible inter-plantings. Thank you Kevin for putting the be in my bonnet.

It is really amazing what a year can make. I have my temporary greenhouses in place but have not had to use them but once. Last year I found that 60's was the warmest I wanted the temperature to be. That translates into the upper 80's under the film. We will have to see what the middle of January brings.

I am cringing a bit since I planted some seed potatoes and noticed some are emerging (last year they emerged the 1^st of March). This could be a catastrophic failure or a bumper crop. The Agribon 70 is at stand by. Also noticed that my globe artichoke is peaking its head up too. This is the middle of December??? Started my first tom seeds for February out planting. Who knows if the season continues I may have a fully planted garden in February?? How strange is this weather, but it has been a very pleasant fall and winter starts this Sunday. I think I will jump on board and see where this ride goes, it should be interesting.