The Next Level of Interplanting

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey you well farmer Jesse here gonna do a quick video on real a cropping in the market garden so let's do it [Music] first things first if you're not subscribed to this channel what gives if you are subscribed you're awesome so here's the thing real a cropping this idea is a form of companion planting or inner planting what relay cropping is is that you have a crop growing and you put the next crop into that first crop so it's growing at the same time so when the first crop comes out the second crop just kind of takes over the bed I'm doing a lot of different trials with that on our farm because one of the goals for our farm is to get to what I'm calling ever bed farming where every bed is in constant production so it's constantly photosynthesizing year-round that's kind of a goal we have but it takes a lot of development in the inner cropping in relay cropping areas really make that work because it's kind of insane it's kind of insane so what I'm gonna do today firing range is describe some of the different ways we've utilized this sort of relay cropping to our benefit in a market garden context and I should also just preface this by saying I didn't invent relay cropping or intercropping nobody that is alive invented these things these are very ancient techniques used by indigenous cultures to maximize space and maximize labor and get the most out of the photosynthesis so what I'm gonna try and do today is kind of just bring it into the Market Garden context starting with the zucchini right here so let's look at it alright so I think I've mentioned this in previous videos but you see these nice zucchini and an aster mostly zucchini but underneath of the zucchini you can also see green onions coming up okay so this zucchini when it was planted was planted into radishes the radishes came out the zucchini went grew up and took over the bed okay under before it took over the bed I went through and planted sowed a few rows of green onions so next what will happen is that as these we've been harvesting off these for four or five weeks so they're you know they're getting closer to being done so wool once these are done producing we'll cut these out and we'll have a little space where they were left to put in head lettuces so then head lettuce will come in after the zucchini but before the green onions have totally taken over the bed so that's a relay crop so that's one crop going into the next one going into the next one and maximizing that space so that there's really not but a couple weeks in Burdine in between production should probably go without saying that this is not first year market gardening stuff get some experience just with basic market gardening growing single crops then get some experience maybe trialing different inner crops like beets under your tomatoes or lettuce under your tomatoes before you start moving on to relay cropping because it is a little bit more complicated you do kind of have to understand how these crops grow how long they take literally what they look like in the ground when you're gonna harvest them what the differences between all of them are so good to get some experience with that before you start moving on to this let's talk about this one so this whole bed was green onions on this side the whole bed was green onions but this side we harvested out right we harvested them just as like scallions this side I planted red onions and those are just now starting to bulb up you see there but where the scallions came out where the green onions came out we put in cucumbers so those are those are lemon cucumbers that are sort of taking over the bed so in a few weeks we'll take out probably like two weeks we'll take out the red onions and then the cucumbers can have that whole bed before we give up that whole bed we'll probably try and under so this with something probably this one actually may go into a summer cover crop but something anything it could be something like carrots they would follow that I don't want to give you the impression that all of these are a super big success I'm doing a lot of different trials here this one was carrots that we transplanted yellow squash into and like these plants that are below me look really nice but then you have plants like this and like this right so carrots came out squash kind of took over the bed but it's some of these are producing and some of these are not even close to producing once again though I did under so these with green onions and they look pretty good so we'll just see I mean it may be kind of a funky trial but so far so good so another one we're sort of experimenting with but haven't had great germination on them yet is under sowing lettuce head lettuces with carrots and obviously having green onions in the middle that's one that I think could really work if you could get your good germination on your carrots I'm not sure what happened here the germination is just all over the place but I don't think that's a matter of the inner plant I think that's just a matter of too much compost and not enough soil contact so they dried out a little bit but I that's another idea that we're working with to have let us come out carrots grow up onions come out cares continue and then carrots would be after that so that would be several crops in a 50 60 70 day period how I fertilize and cultivate in this situation so like in this so like for the for this going back to this cucumber 1 when the cucumbers went in we put down a little bit more compost in a little bit of alfalfa meal and I'm kelp and then when these onions come out we'll pull them but we'll also yank this groovy weed that you see below it at the same time and then we'll reefer ttle eyes it so the idea here is that we're preparing that portion of the bed wherever the crop was as we're pulling it so I can't honestly say how it would go with every single crop because every crop is gonna be a little bit different you have to be a little bit flexible and here's like an example of that to where we have the green onions interplanted into the lettuces mostly head lettuces there are some cut lettuces here what I like about this too is it actually helps blanch the green onion a little bit let me see maybe just pull these more eat them for breakfast it does add a little bit of a blanch to the green onion which i think is nice usually we leave the green onion bottoms in there but so yeah obviously we let these grow a little bit more we probably cut out the lettuce and then cut out the green onions just depending on where they are in size but with this I found that you really have to have your green onions started at least two weeks before your lettuce so this is one that probably could have been time just a little bit better but it's not that bad so this is beans with head lettuce underneath and the head lettuce isn't quite where I want it in terms of I would like this to be coming out now so it doesn't get totally overtaken by beans but they're pretty close I mean they're within a week or so of each other so the beans were transplanted and then the lettuce was transplanted as well at the same time and then so the idea with that beans and lettuce one is that we would cut the lettuce out let the beans grow up but so something where the lettuces and then maybe transplant what I'm thinking is gonna be peppers after the beans let me show you one more before we hop off here and I go eat these onions so in an earlier video I talked about planting head lettuce into carrots that didn't germinate well so we did that carrots came out the head lettuce grew up then the head lettuce came out but before it did we planted melons into that head lettuce so now we've got a bed of melons that are growing just behind that we're growing wall that lettuce was growing and this is one thing yeah you end up with maybe like a little bit of weed material you know kid some grasses and whatnot but in our system we don't run into a lot of weed issues so as long as you come through and you just kind of pick them out then this sort of intercropping idea at least so far as we've seen it can work so here's another example of how this can work so I've got potatoes kind of on the outside and beets sort of in the middle so the beets are coming out and will entirely come out first and then the potatoes will grow up but that gives me a chance to plant something there down the middle so anyway that's real a cropping I don't necessarily want you to run out and just start planting stuff into other stuff think about it do it logically I have a patreon page where people give us money so that we can afford to experiment a little bit more than your average grower on a production scale context so I'm able to do this because if I have a failure I have a little bit of a buffer I'm able to fail more so let me do the failing for you if you have any ideas for intercropping or if you've done anything really worked in this sort of reel a crop style let me know I'd love to hear about them put them in the comments section like this video if you like this video make sure to subscribe to this channel and we'll see you all later all right [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: No-Till Growers

Views: 218,036

Keywords: notill, no dig, relay cropping, market gardening, interplanting, intercropping, companion planting, how to, vegetable farm, organic farm

Id: zFphgNn0wt4

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020