Intercropping and square foot gardening
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Posts: 27
Hello, I am new to gardening and only have a very small space but it's the first time I will be able to grow my own vegetables.
Since I'm using a bag which I've turned into a raised bed which is only around a metre squared, I want to get as much out of the space as I can - so using intercropping with the square foot gardening technique looks very appealing.
Many places say combining these techniques can increase your yield. However, nowhere seems to explain how to space the plants to make this work.
With traditional rows, you would put say a row of radishes between a rows of carrots, but with SFG you wouldn't have this spare space. A couple of websites imply you intermix half and half (8 carrots, 8 radishes) but then you don't increase overall yield at all. I'm thinking perhaps the slow growers could go in the small gaps between the fast growers, but am worried the slow-grow seedlings might be too overshadowed to germinate in that case...
I wondered if anyone knows the best way to space things - or can help me work it out!
Thanks!
Jo
Last edited: 27 May 2016 13:29:54
Posts
Personally I'd divide the area into 4 and just plant 4 different varieties into each of the 4 squares.
If just one bag is the only area available to you I would only grow stuff which is expensive to buy in the shops, which you can harvest nearly continuously and which is lovely to be able to use extravagantly. So I would grow herbs - perhaps chives, coriander, parsley and dill - they will all tolerate the same sort of conditions. Or you could go for ones which prefer drier / better drained conditions such as rosemary, thyme, oregano etc
With the exception of the coriander and dill I would buy in some plants in to ensure an early harvest. One supermarket parsley plant will divide very easily and give you 3 or 4 plants which is plenty. Same with thyme. Coriander and dill germinate quickly from seed.
Another expensive supermarket purchase are salad leaves and you could have perhaps 2 squares of leaves, a square of beetroot and a square of radishes.
Within each of the squares you could sow (thinly) half the area now and the other half in about 4 weeks. Beetroot and radish leaves can also be added to salads. Most salad leaves (lettuce, rocket, mizuna etc) can be treated as 'cut and come again' - so cut a few leaves and the plant will regrow new ones. Maybe 3 or 4 times per plant.
How about:
1/4 = beans (french or runner) intercropped with lettuces/spinach or strawberries.
1/4 = Dwarf bush tomatoes intercropped with basil/coriander/parsley.
1/4 = Courgettes
1/4 = Carrots, Beetroot and Radish
These will all grow happily together all summer so long as the soil is sufficiently rich and well prepared beforehand. Beans and courgettes would be my must haves for small spaces as they produce for months on end. Beans also grow vertically, so take up little space!
There's not much evidence behind one crop increasing the yield of another I'm afraid, it's mostly up to clever spacing and growing combinations. That said, it's rumoured tomatoes produce better planted with basil. Combinations like this are down to one possibly deterring the pests of another. Likewise with onions and carrots.
Good luck!!
Food for the plants is key, some are more hungry than others, some require stuff to encourage tuber growth where some require top growth. You know not to grow roots in freshly manured ground, but you might find just compost will be exhausted of nutrients if you plant something too hungry like courgette for example. I grow what I like fresh the best, doesn't matter if it's cheaper in the shops, it will never taste the same as fresh picked. If you can put in the work required with feeding and watering, then grow your favourites, I am growing(or at least hoping to) things like Fennel and Sweetcorn, both dodgy in NE Scotland, but the flavor of fresh produce is worth the effort, salad crops are grown with them, they are not too hungry.
Thank you Topbird, Stuart R and tigerburnie! These are all really helpful
Topbird, I was hoping to have some herbs so really useful to know which will grow happily together and tigerburnie, its good to know which veg are hungry! -- I do plan to have a (solitary) courgette... (and salad leaves!) so does that mean I ought to get hold of some plant food?
Stuart R, I love the idea of intercropping tomato and herbs - but the key question for me was how to space this and other veg using Square Foot Gardening methods. With toms and herbs i would guess you might put the herbs beneath the toms, then harvest before the toms get too big. I had thought to do this with salad leaves beneath a dwarf courgette (which I'm going to try and train up to give it more height and less spread). Does that seem right?
What about intercropping carrots and radishes in a square foot set up. My idea about how to do this would be to translate the SFG method to an optimum hexagonal packing set up where the plants are offset like in a brick wall - so in image below you can imagine a 3 inch spacing for mature radishes and you'd plant the seeds (inc spares for thinning) at the centre point of each circle.
The white gaps left between the red circles are then around 1 inch wide and could be the centre points for rows of carrots, giving the carrot seedlings an inch of space to germinate between the radishes, then 3 inches once the radishes are harvested. i know carrot seedlings should only come up just as the radishes are being harvested. however, my worry is that the radishes may then be too tall for the carrot seedlings to get enough light in those days of germination under the soil. Does anyone know if this would be the case?
Thanks again all for your help!