Intercropping Ideas For Success in The Garden

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the mi gardener channel in today's episode we're going to be talking all about intercropping why i love it what is it some good intercropping combinations and some not so good intercropping combinations the first part that i want to address is what is intercropping intercropping for those of you that have never heard this term before intercropping is the act of planting two or more different types of plants in a given space this could be things like basil and tomatoes which is probably one you've heard of it could be things like cucumbers and lettuce which is one you probably haven't heard of and we'll talk about that it could also be something like this small little arugula and this taller swiss chard which is probably another combination you might not have heard of before but we use with great success here in our garden those are two different crops planted in the same space or it could be something even as extreme as all of your mediterranean plants it could be like your fig plants your tarragon your sage your oregano your rosemary your thyme your basil your parsley all the plants that really don't mind being in a little bit of drought being in drier conditions being in more arid environments those crops all do well together so you could plant all of those together in a intercropping method so now that we touched on what is intercropping and why i love it so much i wanted to give you some more specific benefits of intercropping because i think a lot of you have heard of the term of intercropping but don't really know you know how you can apply it or where the benefits really can be seen i mean yes you can grow more food in less space and yes you can grow higher quality produce but give me some examples a lot of you like examples and so that's what i'm going to do the first one is one that we're sitting by and that is our arugula and our swiss chard this is a great inner cropping method and it combines smaller plants with taller plants but of the same kind of a same food group if you will these are both leafy greens but they're not the same in that their growth habits are totally different arugula is a very small plant swiss chard is a very tall plant swiss chard is very heat tolerant drought tolerant it's just a it's a beast of a plant you really can't kill it it's very difficult whereas with arugula it does not like the heat it does not like the drought it goes to seed very fast and it matures very quickly and so what we did was we actually combined the shorter arugula with the taller swiss chard and how we did that is we actually spaced them out we planted them in blocks but we planted them in a way that as the swiss chard grew it actually shaded and protected the arugula from the hot summer sun it also gave us some protection that as we let once we let some plants go to seed we let some arugula plants go to seed and drop their seed the seeds then sat on this bare soil surface they got watered and over time they germinated but at the time they germinated it was right during the hottest part of summer right during the dog days of summer and normally if something sprouts especially a cool loving plant like arugula if it sprouts it'll pretty much bolt immediately or it just will be completely unpalatable and really undesirable but with the intercropping combination of additional protection from the second crop not even the first crop mind you but the second crop it allowed the young seedlings protection from the sun as well it allowed the seedlings enough time to grow and mature until the season got cooler to where they no longer really need the protection because it's much cooler during the day and they're growing just fine they're growing stress-free and to prove that they're not totally unpalatable and you know disgusting like greens normally get during the summer i'll show you they are so incredibly buttery they're not peppery at all they're super sweet and they're just i mean they're incredible they're one of our favorite greens to harvest right now in the garden and that's all thanks to the swiss chard now another wonderful intercropping combination that we use here in the garden is any brassica with any herb and the reason why these go so well together is because herbs offer protection from cabbage mods cabbage mods are something that plague any brassica plant whether it's a broccoli a cauliflower kale or cabbage and the reason why is because cabbage mods will hone in on the scent of a brassica and like i said it can be any brassica it can even be brussels sprouts or collard greens and what they do is they lay their eggs on the underside of the leaves and when they hatch these little green inchworms come out and they absolutely decimate absolutely decimate your plants they'll leave your plants filled with holes if not completely bare right down to the veins of the leaves and so what you want to do is you want to plant them next to some herbs now the reason why this is a huge benefit is because the herbs they readily give off their essential oils this also applies to things like squash bugs with squash vine borers it also applies to things like tomatoes with tomato hornworm herbs what they do is when they give off their essential oils they mask the scent of the plant that predators are trying to hone in to lay eggs on so it could be brassicas with with the cabbage moth it could be tomatoes with tomato hornworm or it could be squash plants or cucumber plants with the squash vine borer or squash bugs and when you mask the scent of those plants those those insects have a heart much harder time finding those plants and honing in on them so much so that we've actually seen uh the uh the cabbage moth hovering around these plants are there any eggs on them no we've checked very thoroughly is there any damage on these plants well see for yourself check this out get a load of this kale here this kale looks absolutely stunning there's not a single bit of damage on any of these leaves no damage whatsoever it's just absolutely flawless there's no cabbage moths even though we've seen so many cabbage moss fluttering around these plants not a single one has had any damage and what's to thank for that this right here this is a close proximity planting of tons of herbs now there is a small space there's a small space in between here and that small space is not that big of a deal because of the scent of these herbs here you have a huge pineapple sage plant you have a huge cinnamon basil plant or a thai basil plant you have a huge cinnamon basil plant you have mint you have dill you have lemongrass you have more dill under here and that right there is a great way to have tons of aromatics floating throughout the air so much so that even just from brushing these plants if i go like this the whole air i can immediately smell just a an explosion of fragrance another really successful intercropping combination that we've used is carrots and onions the reason why is because carrots are plagued with carrot fly and much like your brassicas or your tomatoes or your squash plants being the scent being masked by herbs onions do a very similar thing for carrots carrot fly they actually hunt out the scent of carrots and what they'll do is they will essentially sting the carrot and they'll lay an egg when they sting the carrot and that carrot will actually have a maggot that will grow in the center of the carrot rotting out the core this basically means that the carrots not really worth eating anymore it rots if it doesn't completely die and the the maggot will live inside that carrot and they specifically look for carrots and so there have been many studies done with the benefits of planting onions and carrots and this is a really good combination of two plants that they grow really well together they have similar benefits because the the carrots they don't shade out the onions because the onions have very tall spindly leaves and the you know the the onions they don't affect the carrots growth and development at all because the onions they grow on top of the soil and the carrots they burrow deep into the soil so they don't take up any part of the soil or air where there'd be competition and you have the added benefit of the fact that the carrots do better because you have much less damage to carrot fly which is something that we have really badly here in the spring if our if our springs are damp and cold you can bet that we're gonna have carrot fly and we've lost about half of our carrots in years that are damp and cool to carrot fly that was until we planted the next onions now we'll use any type of onion but our favorite type of of intercropping is actually with bunching onions and the reason why is because onions they have a much longer maturity time so we'll plant our big bulbing onions by themselves and i'll get into those in a little bit but we plant things like bunching onions because bunching onions mature in a very similar time as carrots do carrots mature in about 45 to 65 days and so do bunching onions and that means they're ready to harvest at the exact same time as well so there's a huge benefit to planting them together and we've had a really good amount of success with it so whether it's with the tomatoes that we stake up or the cantaloupes and cucumbers that we grow vertically growing vertically is a great way to intercrop with things that need a little more shade see these tomatoes they produce just fine but a wonderful understory crop that we've used as an intercropping method has been beans and basil beans and basil are two crops we've had really good success with for different reasons basil provides the pest deterrent that we just talked about and beans they actually provide the tomatoes provide shade for them so they can produce longer into the season during really hot seasons we've actually had a difficult time getting our beans to produce in our bean bed but when planted around our tomatoes the shade actually gave them just enough cool cool temperatures to where they could continue producing even when it was really hot and the added benefit is that the beans once the beans die back and they're done because inevitably they will be done when they when the plants die back any nitrogen that's left in the roots feeds the tomato plants and so the tomato plants get a boost in nitrogen and the bean plants get some added they get some added shade so they produce better and both of them produce both of them will produce the only difference is is that when you plant them together you not only can get a harvest of tomatoes but you can get a meal of beans again why could i not add why should i not advocate that now much like our tomatoes and our beans another intercropping combination we've used with great success are our vining crops when we trellis our vining crops like our cucumbers peas cantaloupe things like that they vine and they create a wall of foliage and that wall of foliage protects and shades the soil much like we talked about with our arugula and our swiss chard a similar thing happens with those plants we'll plant things that are more shade loving or more cool more cool loving like let's say lettuce lettuce is a great example we'll plant our lettuce next to our cantaloupes or next to our peas and we end up getting about three to four additional weeks this is the first type of plant that does not like to be intercropped and that's a space hog this right here is horseradish but it doesn't matter what the plant is if it's a space hog it does not like to be inter-cropped this horseradish here is about three feet wide by about three feet tall this thing is huge and because it's so big it's kind of just a it's a bully it pushes things over it flattens them it shades them out it out competes and outgrows it just does not like to share the garden space that it's in and so intercropping with this as we made the mistake of with a very unfortunate a very unfortunate eggplant here which is completely shaded out at this point it doesn't like to share the space similar space hogs can be things like cucumbers pumpkins any type of squash plant that crawls along the ground if you don't trellis it up it becomes a space hog and that's because it just the growth habit of it it basically just tramples anything and it will crawl up anything and smush it and shade it out because it's a vining plant the second type of plant are plants that don't share the soil very well these could be things like potatoes now you would never plant potatoes with other crops because you're harvesting them for the roots and when it comes time to digging those plants up you're going to have to damage the root system of all the other plants they also get very bushy and wide and very tall much like this much like this horseradish plant and so in a way it can also be a space hog but it's a it's a kind of a soil hog as well because you have to dedicate that soil space to that crop and you really can't plant anything else there without risking killing it by digging it up so it becomes kind of a nuisance to intercrop those types of plants and one final quick note that i wanted to make is that companion planting is not the same as intercropping i know a lot of you are going to ask this well you'll say luke you don't advocate companion planting and you're right i don't and that's because companion planting is very strict it's very regimented and it ends up really stealing a lot of the joy from your garden because you're you're worrying all the time about will this plant do good next to this plant and what if this plant doesn't agree with this plant again there are those plants that don't they don't do so well next to each other and those are not so smart plantings but other than that if they're smart plantings and you see a benefit between having the two in the same space go for it and that's really where intercropping gives you a lot more diversity a lot more variety of what you can plant next to what and you're going to see a lot of benefits so that's all i got for you today i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you learned something new if you want to see the reasons and why i don't recommend companion planting go check out the video why i don't recommend companion planting and there's nothing against someone that companion plants it's just and me as a gardener i like to use my garden space as a canvas and kind of have my own creative outlook on what i want to plant and i don't want to be so pigeon-holed into planting one thing next to another thing because the specific reason so just gives me a little more freedom and a little more variety to choose from so as always i hope you guys enjoyed hopefully you learned something new and as always we'll catch you all later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 222,725

Keywords: gardening tip, polyculture, grow more food, howto, migardener, Premiere_Elements_2018, how-to, garden tip, tutorial, simple, easy, intercropping, success, how to, gardening

Id: UpDS1ET7NU0

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 05 2020