Succession Planting

[digitS']

I think that it's something of a dog-eat-dog world out there. Plants aren't really public-spirited and concerned about their fellow plants. Maybe the best that can be hoped for with companions is that one will benefit and the other won't be seriously inconvenienced.

More often than not, there is competition and especially, within families. So, mixing them together is probably best. Carrots may love tomatoes but I don't know what the tomatoes think about the carrots or if carrots and lettuce really care all that much about each other. Maybe it is just that they tend to grow in such ways that they fit well, even if close together.

Lettuce and onions are supposed to go together but most anything can seriously crowd onions. So, if you have given them adequate space, when the lettuce begins to push up against the onions - out it comes! It should be of useful size. Lettuce is really quickly growing, even in cool spring weather. It can be replaced - with more lettuce plants in a smaller size . If you are going to set out onions really early in the year, it seems like lettuce is a reasonable companion and does a good job of suppressing weeds that the onions are otherwise, too wimpy to do anything about .

After awhile, the warm-season plants that are useful quickly, like summer squash and basil can arrive on stage.

There is one little bed that tends to get a lot of water. I have onions there also but instead of late-planted zucchini, they have cucumber companions. They both went into that bed at the same time and I've put them there in other years. The onions are for scallions and it is only just now that the cukes are starting to push them around. Hardly matters - since they are bunching onions, they have to go anyway.

Elsewhere, I'm trying cucumber transplanted late. This is new and may not work but, I thought it was worth a try !

Steve

 

[Kassaundra]

The info I've been reading about companion planting was more that certain plants go well planted together b/c they provide camofauge to each others major pests, or they grow at different heights so one provides shade to the other, or their roots occupy different depths, or are a great attractor of pollinators etc..... not that they formed a friendship or anything.

Tomorrow I am planting corn 3 sisters style and see if that makes any diff at all.

 

[Holachicka]

Steve! your cabbage looks beautiful! I can never seem to grow cabbage... :/ I was really lucky this year with my succesion/companion planting. I have almost my entire garden in wine barrels, except for a 10x12 patch I used for a three sisters garden. Im the wine barrels I did Tomatoes/mesclun mix, tomatoes and lettuce, squash and beets, squash and swiss chard(not so great) tomatoes and leeks, Tomatoes and carrots and onions, tomatoes and iceburg lettuce and garlic, squash and carrots and onions...

Basically I set the long growing plant in the center and surrounded with the others. Some things like the lettuce, beets and cooler season crops went in well before the main plant, I just placed an upturned pot in the center so I had a place to plant later on.

Now that I've harvested all of the beets, garlic and onions, I'm replanting other things in there spots, more lettuce, and I'm considering starting my fall season veggies from seed in there as well. So far so good!

Oh, and this is my first try for a three sisters garden, and I HIGHLY recomend it!!! I will be doing this every year from now on, it is doing so well!! The corn looks beautiful, the squash and melons I planted in there are REALLY thriving, and the beansare doing there thing! My only problem is that I planted two different types of beans, Lima and yardlong, and the lima just didn't come up... I love my veggie garden! Isn't it great when you see the products of all your hard work?

 

[digitS']

Yes, it is! A little garden success is like hitting pay dirt!

This has worked for me before: the late setting out of summer squash. Cabbage & kohlrabi can go out mid-April. The late summer squash can go into the space of those earlies about the 1st of July. (A regular sowing or transplanting of summer squash was about mid-May.)

Since I still haven't been able to harvest 1 cabbage, it was the kohlrabi's turn to make a little room for the summer squash a couple of weeks ago. There are a few still to come out and the squash down there is only marginally better than that sad thing in the cabbage but, these are much better:

Elsewhere in the garden -- there are tiny zucchinis and lots of flowers on those plants set out in May. I can count on those plants, just hope I can once again, count on these! The late cucumbers are a real question mark . . . afternoon temperatures the last couple of days haven't reached 70F . Oh wait! There's the sun again!

Steve

 

[Eleanore]

About two weeks ago I pulled my kohlrabi, it was over-done. Planted spinach in it's place, and it's up about an inch and filled in fairly nicely. I am anxious to see how it does, as I have never done succession planting before, but have always wanted to.

Have a row of lettuce that I am feeding to my baby chicks, but it's beginning to go the the other way, so I think I'll pull it tomorrow. I am thinking of trying either a different type of lettuce there, OR maybe something else. Any suggestions? It's a row about 20" between cabbage plants and low-growing sunflowers.

 

[digitS']

Spinach! I don't know where you are Eleanore but that could be a wonderful choice. I'm afraid that in a normal year (what's that?), spinach would bolt quickly in my midsummer garden . . .

Green beans have long bean, uh, been what I've turned to for succession summer plantings. I used to think that they would make a crop if I could get the seed in the ground anytime in July. After a couple of failures because Jack Frost sneaked up on me -- I've settled on July 15th as the very last day to drop a bean seed in my garden soil.

Hey! That's tomorrow!

Steve

 

[momofdrew]

Steve your cabbages are awesome... I never have luck with them... the cabbage worm loves them so I dont plant them any more... to many disappointments

I harvested onions, beets, swiss chard, and carrots... pulled my pea plants out and have planted 4 foot rows each of 2 var. carrots and long keeping onions for fall harvest...I transplanted some kale as I had it too close to each other...I evidently miss marked my squashes when I started them inside this spring...I planted three hills of each var. of squash... I thought... but each hill has a zuc, a yellow and an acorn squash in it...

 

[digitS']

...I planted three hills of each var. of squash... I thought... but each hill has a zuc, a yellow and an acorn squash in it...

Ha! That sounds like fun, Pam!

I bet it works just fine.

Steve

 

[ninnymary]

Steve...it is just so, so hard for me to grasp the idea of your rocky soil! I don't know why I have such a hard time. Perhaps it's because I've never seen or heard anything like it? I have so many qustions. Anyway, I assume you only plant seeds in that type of soil? Can you dig in it to plant transplants? Are you able to mark rows for your seeds? I believe you have 4 gardens? I see that one of them doesn't have those rocks. Do the others?

Yet, despite your rocks you are able to grow amazing veggies! You would think, I without my rocks, should be able to! But no, my swiss chard always gets the leaf miner, of my beet seeds, only half sprout, tomatoes struggle in this cool, cloudy, summer weather, and my onions seem to be hit or miss. Oh well, all we can do is try. :/

You always amaze me.

Mary

 

[digitS']

Mary, I have 3 gardens, or 4 if you count the one in my backyard. In the backyard, it is 3 beds and 2 are covered with a 9' by 20' plastic tunnel, I count that as a bed and a tunnel .

One garden isn't quite so rocky, one is very rocky, one is in-between. They are separated by 20 miles but they are all in a glacial valley and there are rocks of almost every size and composition that were torn from the Rocky Mountains and deposited on the valley floor. It is mostly gravel down about 500 to 600 feet. The lakes at the edges of the valley are parts of watersheds between the mountains, the Rockies and the Selkirks. The water was dammed by these hundreds of feet of gravel. The water in some of the lakes just flows into the gravel with no stream on the surface. That means that there is quite an aquifer down there.

Most of my plants are started in a greenhouse and transplanted out. You can imagine, it is sometimes a little difficult to rake the soil free of the gravel well enuf to have a good seed bed. Still, I've learned that timing is the most important thing with seed germinating. I pay fairly close attention to soil temperature early and there's fairly good soil between and amongst all these rocks. Despite what is said about stones warming the soil, I don't think that's really true here. After all, it isn't a stone mulch. If stones hold heat -- what are they doing a foot or 2 feet below the surface? I'd guess they are holding the cold just as well as anything.

One garden, I've had for 15 years. Within a few years, I had the soil cultivated down to 11", the depth of my spading fork tines. This is now true of about half of the bigger veggie garden as well, since the tractor guy is no longer in charge of cultivation. With big gardens and multiple locations, I can swing and miss with some things and just start over somewhere else. You should see my seed bills!

Steve

edited to add: and my garden soil doesn't look so rocky until after I've run the sprinklers on it a few times. then, its true character begins to show itself.