Great article on combining edibles and ornamentals
dirtygardener
5 years ago
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whgille
5 years agoPea
5 years agoRelated Discussions
Planning Your Plantings In the Edible Garden
Comments (38)Mia, Yes , I think it will work. Interplanting tomatoes with other crops is something I do all the time. I often grow smaller plants like lettuce and carrots underneath and between tomato plants, essentially using them as a living mulch beneath the taller tomato plants. I also mix all kinds of herbs into the tomato beds as well, and think those herbs help explain how I grow so many tomato plants and yet only rarely see even a single tomato hornworm or fruit worm. You sometimes will get less yield per plant when you interplant multiple kinds of crops together using close spacing, but since you have a lot more plants occupying the soil, you still get a good harvest . The best carrot crop I ever had was a result of me broadcast sowing lettuce and carrot seed randomly into the tomato bed after the tomato plants already had been transplanted into the ground. My garden was smaller then and I had run out of space, so was packing as much into each bed as I possibly could. I just thinned carrots and lettuce after they sprouted. When I grow onions with tomato plants, normally I hammer a stake into the ground where each tomato plant will be planted later, and leave a small unplanted spot there as I plant the onions. When it it time to transplant the tomato plants into the ground, I put one tomato plant next to each stake. If I have to pull up a couple of onions to make room for a tomato transplant, it isn't a big deal . We eat those onions as scallions. I started interplanting multiple types of plants together long ago, after reading John Jeavon's book "How To Grow More Vegetables...." book. It is amazing how much you can pack into even a small space when you interplant. Even when I grow tomato plants in molasses feed tubs, I generally have pepper plants, herbs and flowers mixed into each container with the tomato plants. Look at how Mother Nature mixes everything up together. On the eastern edge of our woodland, for example, we have native pecan and oak trees growing as the dominant plants, but underneath them we have wild cherries, American persimmons, possumhaw hollies, and redbuds, and beneath those understory trees we have American beautyberry bushes, native blackberries, inland sea oats and brushy bluestem, peppervines and several native wildflowers which ebb and flow with the seasons. All of them happily co-exist. Why can't our gardens be the same way? To garden bio-intensively in this manner, you need to pay careful attention to soil fertility and irrigation (if adequate rainfall is not being received). Obviously when you interplant several types of edible crops together, the plants will be competing with one another. I get smaller onions in interplanted beds than I get from onions grown in a monoculture with recommended spacing, but still get tons of onions. We still have several dozen onions from last year's crop, though now they are starting to sprout. There pretty much is nothing grown in our veggie garden that isn't interplanted with several other things. If I ever were to plant even one single monoculture bed, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like the way it looked and would be out there trying to fix the bed by adding more stuff to it. In fact, I do have my onions planted as monoculture beds right now, but that is because they are the only thing I've put into the ground so far this year. The onions will not be alone in those beds for long. Hope this helps , Dawn...See MoreNEW: Edible Flower Swap
Comments (105)Received my seeds today! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Thank you Kamil and everyone! I'm just about to go start mine! I even got my favorite color, how's that for cool! Maybe we could do a swap based on color next time...Hm, I might have to start one of those based on purple.... :0) Thanks a bunch guys/gals it was fun!...See MoreNEW: Odd, Odder, Oddest - The Incredible Edibles
Comments (67)I wish to sincerely apologize to my swap mate for the odd,oddest swap. Life has been upside down at my house and still in a sideways position but I am back to having a little time for myself. My husband had what appeared to be a stroke but it turned out that sections of his brain are beginning to die off from a bleed he suffered from approximately 15 years ago. I brought him home from rehab on Monday and Monday evening he was admitted to the regular hospital with pneumonia. He is recovering but I do not know if he will be coming home or placed temporily back into rehab for intensive breathing treatments or permanently into a skilled nursing facility. I wish to thank you guys for your patience and understanding and I will be getting my late packages into the mail this coming week. They will be special due to the lateness. I once again offer my apologies. Linda...See MoreIncredible Edible - June Herbs and Edible Flowers Swap
Comments (46)Becky, I know horehound was used to make cough drops. I used to have a recipe but lost it. I bet you could Google it. I remember it was basically a hard candy that used horehound tea as the liquid. It might also work to just drink the tea. I'm having trouble getting thyme to grow from seed too. The sprouts are sooooo tiny, and then something always seems to happen to them....See MorePea
5 years agodirtygardener
5 years agowritersblock (9b/10a)
5 years agolast modified: 5 years ago
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