Content
Growing Various Species vegetables in one bed, is not some new technique. Even the Indians in America planted corn, beans and pumpkins together.
Pumpkin protected the earth from the heat with its leaves and slowed down growth weed. Corn planted nearby could protect the pumpkin from overheating, and beans were able to enrich the soil with nitrogen, which was so necessary for the first two crops. And in Rus', joint planting of herbs and vegetables was often used to protect against pests. It’s just that in the last hundred years, much has been forgotten, although in other countries there has been a constant accumulation of experience in the use of joint planting of vegetables.
The compatibility of vegetables in the beds allows for better use of the available land, and it can also look very beautiful from the outside. Only in this matter there are many nuances. To take all of them into account, it is necessary to draw up a detailed site plan and think through all possible planting patterns in advance.
Why are combined plantings needed?
In fact, in nature it is difficult to find large fields consisting entirely of one crop. Most often you can find a wide variety of plants that help and support each other. But what is important for humans, above all, is productivity.So, with combined plantings, you can get several times more yields of various vegetables and herbs from the same area.
Moreover, with proper planning, it becomes possible to obtain a constant harvest of fresh vegetables from early spring to late autumn.
Mixed plantings allow you to completely cover the ground and prevent weeds from giving free rein. In addition, they do not cause such one-sided depletion of the soil, which often occurs with mono-planting of vegetables.
Finally, many plants growing in close proximity can improve the taste of their neighbors and the nutritional value of their fruits.
Good neighbors
There is a whole group of plants that have a beneficial effect on almost any vegetable if planted nearby. These are the so-called aromatic herbs. There are also special pairs of vegetables and herbs that it is advisable to plant side by side. For example, basil can improve the taste of tomatoes planted nearby, and dill has the same effect on cabbage.
Well compatible vegetables are cucumber and corn. Corn protects the cucumber from the scorching heat and also serves as a support for its long vines.
Below is a table that shows what vegetables can be combined with to obtain a beneficial effect.
When talking about good neighbors, one cannot fail to mention the role of legumes.They are able to process nitrogen from the air with the help of special nodule bacteria that exist on their roots. Therefore, they can supply nitrogen to plants growing nearby. Although maximum nitrogen is released after the plants die. Therefore, after legumes, you can plant any plants that require nitrogen content in the soil, for example, pumpkin or cabbage.
For foreign gardeners, a favorite plant that is actively used in joint plantings is spinach. Its roots secrete special substances that help absorb nutrients from the soil. Spinach sits wonderfully in the same bed with potatoes, beets, tomatoes, and beans. In addition, its leaves cover the soil while other plants are still small, and protect it from drying out and from the dominance of weeds.
Protective plants
Typically, this category includes plants that repel insects, but not only. Often, aromatic herbs planted next to vegetables confuse pests more and prevent them from finding an attractive plant by smell. For example, to protect cabbage beds from cabbage cutworms and flea beetles, you can plant strongly fragrant plants nearby, such as sage and thyme. For the same purposes, garlic is planted to protect roses from aphids, and basil is planted near beans to protect against bean weevil.
From the table below you can find out which plants protect against the main pests of garden crops.
Plants that should not be planted nearby
Hostile relationships are quite rarely observed between plants. Poor compatibility is most often explained by their secretions from roots or leaves, which can inhibit the growth of neighbors. For example, sage does not get along well with onions, marigold adversely affects beans.Kale will not like being next to tansy, and potatoes will not like being next to quinoa.
Naturally, plants of similar height and leaf size do not get along well with each other if they are planted too closely. For example, various types of cabbage and pumpkin.
Options for combining vegetables
The most interesting way to grow vegetables in mixed plantings is to combine them not only horizontally, but also vertically. Not only in space, but also in time. To obtain good harvests, the following rules should be followed:
- Vegetables that belong to the same family should not follow each other, neither in a small crop rotation (during one season) nor in a large one. This must be observed especially strictly in relation to vegetables of the goosefoot family (beets, chard, spinach). Because they have a particularly developed sensitivity to their own root secretions.
- Combine plants with different nutritional requirements in one bed. The main most demanding vegetable crop is placed in the middle of the bed, while plants that are less demanding on nutrition are placed along the edges of the bed. It is also important to place plants with shallow and deep root systems nearby so that they do not interfere with each other.
- Plants must be combined with each other in terms of their requirements for heat and moisture. Thus, all cabbage and pumpkin plants are the most demanding when it comes to watering. Less demanding - tomatoes, root vegetables, lettuce, spinach.All onions, beans, and peas are completely undemanding to moisture.
Examples of mixed plantings of vegetables with different ripening periods make it possible to obtain something like a green conveyor belt throughout the season.
For example, in a bed one meter wide, every ten centimeters the following are planted:
- lettuce, alternating it with radishes every 10 cm;
- watercress;
- head lettuce with kohlrabi are planted through one plant;
- three rows of spinach;
- one row of early potatoes;
- spinach two rows.
There are 9 rows of vegetables and herbs in total. All these cultures go well together. Spinach can be harvested first, about 6 weeks after sowing. Its leaves are cut off, and the roots remain in the ground and serve as fertilizer for the soil. At the same time, the watercress ripens, it is also cut off, thereby freeing up another row. Then the radishes are removed, and the lettuce leaves are cut off one after another, allowing others to grow in breadth.
After another week or two, the head lettuce is removed, and the kohlrabi gets a lot of space for setting good heads of cabbage. The potatoes are removed last. As a result, from one square meter of such mixed vegetable plantings you can harvest about 11 kg of produce.
Another interesting example is the combination of vegetables both horizontally and vertically.
To do this, the bed should be located from west to east, and along its very northern edge a trellis should be installed for a tall crop, in this case climbing beans. The next row will be low-growing tomatoes with a space of 20 cm between the rows, then, after 20 cm, carrots, then onions, and in the last fifth row you can plant some kind of repellent fragrant herb, such as basil.
Carrots and onions are among the first to be sown in this bed. In this case, all vegetables are harvested almost simultaneously.
So that you can create your own mixed planting options, below is a compatibility table for the main vegetables grown in gardens.
Using this table, you can try creating different options for mixed plantings of vegetables. If you use mixed plantings of vegetables throughout the entire garden, then even crop rotation no longer becomes so relevant, since this planting option can help get rid of the accumulation of diseases in the soil.
Try it, create your own variants of mixed plantings, just do not take absolutely all the information indicated in the table on faith. It is best to check them in your own garden. Because plants, like any living beings, can behave unpredictably.
