What a season! Our spring garden is winding down and our summer garden is beginning to thrive. In just a few months, we transitioned from a bare, cold patch of soil to a thriving space of early spring crops. This has been our most successful year of spring crops yet, and we think we can credit this to a few new methods this year:
- Companion planting, 2.0
- No-dig gardening
- Staggered garden seasons
Companion Planting, 2.0
Many gardeners use companion planting as a method of supporting plants in their gardens, or, at least knowing which ones to avoid planting together (tomatoes and potatoes don’t mix!). With the help of companion planting research and permaculture studies, Evan put together a mix of spring plantings designed to support one another and deter pests from the garden.
We planted four rows of the following plants, but in varying starting orders: spinach, onions, romaine, carrots, beets, radishes, and “Four Seasons” lettuce. The rows had the same order, but each row started with a different plant so that the location of the individual species were staggered. While we had kale and peas obliterated one bed over by rabbits, these beds of spring crops were virtually untouched! We had some issues with slugs on deteriorating lettuce leaves, but in all, we had a lot of great success with companion planting.
We started these seeds inside with a method suggested by Charles Dowding, a no-dig gardener on YouTube. In February, we sowed multiple seeds per pod and didn’t thin until much after we transplanted. This allowed us to grow many more plants and take advantage of young lettuce leaves, spring green onions, and tender spinach leaves as the plants grew up.
Because we harvested slowly and for individual meals rather than one fell swoop of harvesting, we counted our harvest by the number of portions – and this year alone, we harvested over 100 salads! For the price of a couple of seed packets, we saved weeks worth of greens we would’ve otherwise bought from the store – and, we have seeds ready to save for next year to ensure another round of growing. This is the kind of sustainability we are working for – though we could eventually expand to selling to friends and family. But for now, it’s about providing for ourselves and ensuring we know how the food is produced.
No-Dig Gardening
This is one that will take some time to reap the benefits – but believe it or not, in just a few years we will be virtually weed-free. Isn’t this the bane of many gardeners, spending hours in the burning sun, trying to save your tomatoes from the weeds encroaching upon them? For me, it’s what makes me give up mid-season – gardening is all well and fine until your beds look like a quarantine haircut. So, to cope with weeds now and in the future, we are trying to commit to putting at least an inch of compost down on our garden a year, which serves two purposes; 1) to deliver amazing nutrient benefits to our garden, and 2) to work as a mulch to suppress the weeds.
The more we have learned about tilling and hoeing, the more we learn that it just brings growth and seeds to the surface and scatters the weeds further. So, instead, we will be using the compost as mulch to suppress the weeds over time, which takes commitment to creating compost. In May, we added a vermicomposting bin to the process – 1000 red wrigglers are here to help break down compost and excrete worm castings and worm tea over time, which will only add beneficial nutrients and micronutrients to our soil. What others buy at the store for $10-15 a bag, we will have ready for free in 6 weeks or less!
Come fall, we can also turn our chickens loose in the garden to work on spent plants and any extra growth. Evan built them a temporary “play pen” in the corner by our pond, and in three days they ate all the chives and yarrow we had growing around our new apple tree. Our yarrow is more than prolific, so we weren’t worried about it growing back, but it was a good practice run to see how they would do with full grown plants. It’s been confirmed – they will definitely eat them. 🙂
Staggered Garden Plans
For the last couple of years, we tried (in vain) to grow three seasons of crops in one bed. We tried starting the seeds indoors and transplanting, but inevitably the plants in the garden needs longer to mature and finish off and our seedlings got choked, leggy, and root-bound while waiting for transplant. Our spring crop always trailed into late June when we needed to have our summer vegetables in by mid-May, which delayed our fall crops into practically non-existence or frosty, undeveloped remains. Last year our summer crops were so late, we harvested corn and zucchini in October!
So, this year, we staggered our bed usage into either 1) one long season production, or 2) two “normal” season production setups that were sandwiched or alternated with cover cropping for rejuvenation. Here’s this year’s layout:
Bed 1: Perennial berry bed, exempt from the current rotation.
Beds 2 & 9: Used to be a walking path, is being sheet-mulched this year with cardboard and compost to ready the soil. Will be a cover-crop in the fall when the sheet-mulching is done.
Beds 3 & 4: Long-term spring veggies, extra short summer cover crop, fall veggies. This started with potatoes, kale, and peas this year – peas and kale have been attacked pretty harshly by rabbits and cabbage moth worms. The potatoes will be ready to harvest in July, so we’ll be on a tight turnaround to work a cover crop through and then sow fall crops.
Beds 6 & 8: Spring veggies, summer cover crop, fall veggies. We finished harvesting spring veggies (lettuces, carrots, beets, spring onions, radishes, spinach) in mid-June. This will have a short-lived cover crop (like buckwheat or clover) for the summer and then will transition back to transplanted fall veggies in August/September. These two beds will lean heavily on spring & fall production with soil revitalization happening in the summer/winter.
Beds 5, 7, & 10: Spring cover crop, summer veggies, fall cover crop. These are our polyculture summer beds and the ones that we dream about in the wintertime. Bed 5 has a polyculture blend of tomatoes, peppers, basil, and calendula, which work together to support one another nutritionally as well as ward off pests. 7 & 10 follow the “Three Sisters” Native American model of corn, beans, and squash (with melons, luffa, zucchini, and cucumber). These beds were sown & transplanted while our spring crops were still going strong. They will lean heavily on summer production and focus on soil revitalization in the fall and winter with winter wheat and red clover.
Bed 11: Pollinator mix, one of our newest beds, also exempt from our current rotation.
It sounds complicated, but it actually makes our lives simpler by spacing out the work! We will only be turning over a few beds at a time and don’t have to have massive amounts of seed starters going at a time.
Our new favorite morning routine has been getting up early, letting out our beautiful, soon-to-be-egg-laying ladies, and working through the garden. We hunt for berries, inspect vegetables, watch Evan pull weeds, harvest a few daily veggies and herbs, and make coffee and a breakfast full of garden-fresh food. During this confusing and anxious time, this small routine has been so soothing and reconnecting – I hope your green space can bring you the same comfort and ease that ours has.
Corner Lot Cornucopia 