Good and Bad Plants to Intercrop Around Tomatoes

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my gardener channel i hope you guys are going to enjoy this episode it's absolutely beautiful in the garden today we're going to be talking about inner cropping and intercropping around tomatoes this is a really common question we get asked and that's because we had a video that i uploaded like two or three years ago go absolutely viral and there's a lot of people finding that video and coming on to our newer videos or commenting on that video about questions they have with intercropping around their tomatoes and so i thought it'd be a good opportunity since i'm planting my tomatoes to talk about this topic because it is a great way to grow more food in less space and that's what this channel is all about is getting you to grow more food in less space and have more fun gardening and so there's a lot of benefits with inner cropping and one of those benefits is that you're going to be covering the soil you're actually going to be keeping the soil cooler in the summer you're going to be watering a lot less because there's less evaporation from the sun beating down on the soil and the wind blowing across the soil there's going to be less weed pressure because there's more plants growing that you want to grow versus bare soil where weeds can grow and so there's tons of benefits with inner cropping but unfortunately there's a lot of misconceptions around it and so i want to kind of touch on some of those those plants that are really good inner cropping plants and also talk about some plants that don't make the best inter-cropping candidates because there was a lot there was a lot of questions on that as well now the first thing that i really want to touch on is the question of uh should you grow should you intercrop when you're growing indeterminants or determinants and this really just has to do with how much space you have you absolutely can intercrop with a determinant you know a determined tomato or a determinate tomato has a determined height and a determined fruit yield it's not as beneficial to inter-crop around those plants because i'd much rather you just plant them as closely as possible because they need three feet spacing just to even grow healthy it it's very difficult to intercrop around those plants yeah you might be able to pop a you know a basil plant in between you know a grouping of four plants but that's not very effective when it comes to intercropping yes it is intercropping but it's just not as effective as indeterminate when you're growing a plant and you're single stemming that plant up a stake you're aggressively pruning all along the stem to to basically focus all the energy on just one main growth stem you're going to have way more usable soil to plant other plants and so i prefer to grow indeterminants for that reason because it allows me to plant my stuff a foot and a half apart versus three feet apart and i'm also getting plants all around my tomatoes as well so many many benefits to to growing indeterminate tomatoes and single stemming them now the first plant that i want to talk about which is not a good interplanting is plants that compete with nutrients if you have a plant like for instance uh like a very uh nutrient hungry uh plant like like cabbage or broccoli very nitrogen hogging plants with big green leaves they're going to have a tough time growing next to a tomato because the tomato is also a very nutrient hogging plant and so two nutrient hogging plants don't make the best candidates for intercropping also broccoli has huge leaves big big leaves and they're going to be able to kind of grow into the tomatoes and they often just get a little bit too big to intercrop so big leaf things are kind of a no-go similarly things like zucchini huge giant dinner plate size leaves they block a lot of air flow they end up kind of holding humidity and moisture near plants that causes things like powdery mildew and blight but also it blocks a lot of sunlight which uh kind of slows down growth and it also steals a lot of nutrients because of how nutrient hogging the plants are so uh so you know big plants and and leafy plants are not the best candidates you want to think about stuff that is kind of like like small right beets beets make amazing inter-cropping candidates because of how fast they grow how low they grow to the ground and the fact they can benefit from a little shade they're not really going to compete too much with a tomato plant also think think of things like lettuce right plants that love that shade especially when it's really hot out they're going to benefit so much from that extra shade that the plants provide the tomato plants provide and so planting lettuce next to your tomatoes is going to give you some much needed shade so you can grow your lettuce longer into the season also things like like carrots right carrots are very great because they grow down rather than up you're growing a root crop next to a tall plant like a tomato you're going to have far less issues those roots are going to go down whereas the plants the tomato plants going to grow up and they're kind of growing in opposite directions and so sometimes opposites attract and that makes them a very good intercropping candidate because they love that shade that shade actually helps keep them cool and the extra moisture that the shade will provide is going to be beneficial for the good carrot development that you want carrots like damp soil because it actually helps them to grow deep down rather than get all wiry and and fibrous when the soil gets dry the next intercropping candidate that doesn't work the best around tomatoes are vining crops things like pole beans cucumbers any type of melon or pumpkins those vining crops they're going to vine and they're going to end up using your plants as support as much as you try to make it not happen eventually there's going to be one stray little tendril that grabs your plant and that's all it takes for them to kind of drag that plant down and once your tomato plants are dragged down by weight they're very prone to things like snapping and also once the the plants are heavy with fruit that extra weight just tends to kind of drag them closer to the ground and you want to keep your tomato plants off the ground as much as possible because that's also going to reduce things like disease so just extra weight and using your plant as support it's not a great combo and also those extra leaves if you have like a pole bean using your tomato as support that pole bean is going to be growing up your tomato plant if the weight's not a problem the extra leaves will be a problem because later on in the season when it's hot and humid those leaves need to dry you need good air flow in between your tomato plants so that they don't have things like blight later on and so because tomatoes are so prone to blight you want as little excess foliage as possible and that's why you prune your tomato plants that's why i advocate pruning tomato plants so you don't have lots of restricted air flow and vining plants have lots of leaves and when they start using your plants as support that's a problem because that's gonna be way less air flow to dry out the leaves if they happen to get damp so if you don't want disease try to keep vining plants away from your tomatoes alright the final thing i wanted to touch on is the concept of companion planting now companion planting is kind of a subcategory of intercropping it basically says that you are going to intercrop with plants that help each other right that's the idea of companion planting they're good companions and this is an issue for me because uh the fact of the matter is is that plants do not communicate they cannot communicate companion planting would say plant carrots next to onions because the onions will help the carrots they are not communicating they are not saying hey i'll help you out if you help me out they don't do that the scent of the onions can help prevent things like carrot fly they absolutely can but it's inadvertent they have no idea that they're planted next to each other so really at its base you have a lot of gardeners that read these these blog posts or these articles and say okay tomatoes what's a good companion plant for tomatoes and they have the they have the the will to enter crop they want to enter crop but they exclude 90 of the other plants that would be perfectly fine to intercrop around their tomatoes because some blog post says ah just stick your basil next to your tomatoes basil does not help tomatoes other than the essential oils given off from the leaves and that can help deter things like aphids that's it that's it you could plant things like marigolds next to your tomatoes you could plant things like onions next to your tomatoes you could plant lettuce radishes uh you could plant carrots you could plant bush beans there's so many things that those lists leave out because someone just wants to create a list that says plant this next to this for this reason and it's one singular reason but people take it like it's the gospel truth and they they just they like i said they omit 90 of the other plants that are great plants to grow just because they're so worried and getting bogged down about these specific companion plants yes the companion plants is kind of a rough guide to give you something that will grow well together but it's by no means the only plant that will grow well next to this plant right so that applies to anything in the garden and we filmed lots of videos on why i don't recommend following companion planting guides and that's simply because there's so many there's so many uh different guides that there's like there's uh intersecting opinions about what to plant next to what and people often just say okay why i'm just not going to interplant because i don't want to mess something up and so when it comes down to it just think of things like smart plantings and not so smart plantings if the plant gets tall don't plant things that are tall if the plant needs air flow don't plant things like vining plants they're going to use it and use the plant as support and block the air flow you plant things that are going to be smart that are going to grow as a good understory crop that are going to benefit from the shade that you know is going to help to insulate the soil to hold moisture near the soil to help uh you know to help keep the soil more cool and you know plant things that are gonna give nutrients back to the soil like bush beans and and uh and plant things like that those are good beneficial plants and as long as you stick to those rules there's really no other rules so i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you learned something new as always this is luke from the my gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home and as always we'll catch you all later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 60,604

Keywords: Premiere_Elements_2018, around, companion plant, garden, garden tip, gardening tip, growing, growing tomatoes, intercropping, luke, mi gardener, migardener, planting, tomato, tomato plant, tomatoes, turotial

Id: M8M6RFWkD4M

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Sat May 28 2022