A big thanks to Jolynne Miller for a wonderful presentation. Below is an overview and the video is at https://youtu.be/akNz2UxqZUU
ROTATION PLANTING
You don't want to plant the exact same crop in the exact same place as the year before. The basic guideline for crop rotation is to avoid planting crops from the same family, (such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra and potatoes) in the same spot year after year. Generally, it is recommended to wait three years to plant those crops in the same place again. This is so you avoid building up soil-borne pathogens that thrive on that particular plant family. You can grow the same plants, just not in the same places they were last season. Grow tomatoes where you grew your herbs, herbs where you grew your cucumbers, and cucumbers where your tomatoes were, etc.
VERTICAL GARENING
Vertical gardening is a major component of square foot gardening, in which you grow plants verticallywith the use of poles, stakes, livestock fencing supported with t-posts, trellises, even using netting suspended from overhead supports in the greenhouse to grow your garden up instead of out.
There are so many advantages to growing vertically.
1. Gives you more space to grow more food for your family, especially in a smaller space.
2. Gives you a better ability to reduce leaf litter and plant clutter where pests can hide.
3. Puts plants closer to eye level, you can easily monitor the health of your plants.
4. Easier to spot and harvest crops when ripe.
Besides growing your pole beans and peas vertically, try this method for indeterminate varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, varieties winter squash, spaghetti squash, melons, and even watermelon can be grown vertically with help of support slings. Zucchini & summer squash will do well when they are tied to a pole off of the grown. Doing this will help create more room for other plants and also aid you in your battle with those nasty squash bugs.
INTERCROPPING
Why use intercropping?
1. Intercropping is diverse gardening, allowing you to grow more vegetables in less space. Intercropping is most effective when growing vertically, allowing you to grow more plants in the space where before you grew your plants horizontally.
2. Often, we design our garden beds to grow just one crop; we have a bed of tomatoes, one for lettuce, one of peppers and so on. This can have potential problems. It gives pests a greater ability to hone in a specific crop: Tomato horn worms – tomatoes, squash bugs/vine bores – squash and cucumber & melon vines, Tomatillos are plagued by Colorado potato beetles. For organic gardeners, intercropping helps with pest control by increasing the diversity of the scents, which can help mask the scent of the targeted plants, and you won’t have near the number of pests as when you don’t do intercropping.
3. Bare spots of ground open up to soil to the rays of the sun that bakes it and kills off some of the nutrients and good bacteria in the top layer of the soil, where a lot of the vitality of the soil is found, and also opens up the soil to weed seeds. Intercropping can fix this problem.
An example of a benefit of intercropping is tomatoes are large nitrogen feeders, but root crops don’t use a lot of nitrogen as they use more phosphorus for root development. It is advantageous to grow root crops such as radishes, carrots, beets, rutabagas, parsnips at their bases. Another way to use intercropping is to grown plants such as herbs, lettuce and spinach the shade of tall plants such as tomatoes or corn, of any vertically grown plant; which can tolerate some shade and will do better in the cooler space created by afternoon shade. Don’t forget to plant flowers amongst your vegetables. Not only will you appreciate the splashes of color, but they are great at deterring pests. Marigolds help to reduce aphids, tomato horn worms and nematodes. Lavender is another great pest determining flower and you will enjoy its fragrance in your garden.
WHAT TO PLANT NOW – COOL CROPS
Hardy - Average Planting Date: February 15 - March 15 Sow seeds for: Beets, Broccoli Raabe, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrots, Cilantro, Cauliflower, Collards, Kohlrabi, Lettuce, Onions, Parsnips, Peas, Potato, Radish, Spinach, Swiss Chard, Turnip, Plant - Asparagus & Rhubarb crowns.
Semi-Hardy - Average Planting Date: March 20 - May 15 Plant seedlings: Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Cauliflower.
It is this time that I start my warm crop seeds indoors. They will be ready to plant outside mid-May.
Cool crops - You will want to plant 6-8 weeks before the last frost. These crops prefer colder temperatures for germination.
Carrots and Parsnips like damp, cool soil. If you wait until the soil is warm and dry, carrot and parsnip germination rates go down. The same is true with celery. Also, celery takes a long time to mature, so plant early.
Beets love the cool weather and will generate more greens during the cold weather. You can harvest the outer greens while leaving the inner greens and this will not harm the plant. When the weather warms, that is when the actual beet root begins to grow. It is a two for one plant. Radishes need cold, damp soil. They bolt and go to seed after 75 degrees. They mature in 25-30 days, plant in succession, every two weeks until weather turns hot. Spinach also needs cold weather to do well. This is another vegetable that you can do succession planting, planting every two weeks until it becomes too warm. Kale is very cold hardy, and in our area is a bi-annual or perennial, if deer are kept away. Harvest the leaves as the plant continues to grow.
Lettuce – Cold weather is key; it will allow you to grow it longer. It bolts and turns bitter when temps exceed 80 degrees for extended time.
Onions and potatoes handle the cold well. Start early as they take over 110 days to mature.
Swiss Chard grows in all seasons, and germinates well in the cooler soil.
Broccoli Raabe or Broccolini does well in cool and pretty good as the weather gets warmer. You have a great harvest by cutting the little heads and side shoots that grow quickly, instead of waiting for the big broccoli head, which, when it gets too warm is quick to bolt. If you sow your seeds for these cool crops and you don’t immediately see your seedlings coming up, remember that everything has their own temperature for germinating. Don’t worry, when they reach their ideal temperature, you should start seeing them come up.
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