Written by Here’s a simple strategy to grow more vegetables in very little land in a low maintenance garden. It’s called Intensive Successional Planting (ISP). It’s a cut-down – easier to apply – form of French intensive gardening. In simple terms, it’s a combination of many clever sustainable gardening ideas. And it’s highly effective!
The first thing you do is to set small plants between bigger ones and plant fast growing or tiny fruit and vegetables between the giants to pull early as ‘catch crops’.
That’s just a basic description of ISP but the following steps make a good start. The first requirement for intensive organic gardening using ISP is rich and friable soil. Plus a hatred of wasted space. The natural universe abhors empty soil, and so should we!
First step. Intercrop your organic plants
Intercropping has been called the art of growing different plants close together so that each makes best use of the soil and none stifle – but all complement – the other. So in the perfect case we’d fit together a root crop with a leafy crop, plus plants of varying canopy width, plus a climbing plant with a low bushy crop – all in the same restricted space. If we do that, the dense sowing at several levels not only increases the food yield but it also suppresses all but the most stubborn weeds.
Companion planting adds another profitable twist to intercropping. Many of its truisms contradict each other (and are doubtless myth). For example, do tomatoes loathe brassica or love them? Authorities differ. But some plant preferences are well attested.
For example, alliums such as leeks, garlic and onions often stunt legumes like peas and beans, as many gardeners will attest. (However, some have profitably grown runner beans beside onions for decades, with little difficulty.)
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True, it is unwise to grow potatoes or aubergines alongside tomatoes – or carrots with dill – because they’re of the same families, attract the same pests and can impart disease to each other. And so on.
Why companion planting often succeeds
If the folk tales of companion planting seem to work at times, it may be because the plants use aspects of the soil that their companions don’t. For example:
It is often a good idea to grow intermediate climbing peas up jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes), maize or sunflowers. A time-proven idea is to intercrop those lofty plants with cucurbits and squash, that sprawl into the sun, or with dwarf beans – that quite like moderate shade. Another idea is to plant dwarf beans or celery alongside broccoli, outdoor cucumbers, cauliflower, kale or Swiss chard.
You can also raise dwarf peas between bush beans, so the beans keep up the peas. What’s more, you can further intercrop the gaps between with parsnips and main-crop carrots.
A great idea is to plant onions between strawberries. The onions don’t seem to mind the strawberries’ encroaching low foliage. Onion sets can be put in almost any place to fill a gap, except arguably among peas and beans.
Almost all vegetables will live happily in any rich friable plot, slightly acid to neutral (pH6 – 7) if the soil is not heavy with new manure. (Only heavy feeders like squash and tomatoes, rhubarb and sweet corn can survive in fresh manure.) So inter-cropping in these cases is very wise.
Step 2. Catchcrop with early maturing plants
Catchcrops are early plants that you harvest before the main crop matures. For example, have you ever thought of planting early golfball-sized beetroot between rows of potatoes? The potato haulm protects the beets from sun and wind, while the beet foliage retains moisture between the potato rows. It provides a natural mulch.
Why not set beetroot between main-crop carrots? (beet leaves are said to shelter the carrots from carrot fly.)
What about… little early stub-rooted carrots or turnips between tomatoes or broad beans? By the time the main vegetables need room (and onions especially hate being congested, unless they’re among strawberries), the catchcrops have been taken up.
Another idea is… fast-grown lettuce or aragula (rocket) set among any main-crop plant – like rhubarb, potatoes, jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes), strawberries or cabbages?
Just about any plant can be grown as a catch crop, if you crop it before it’s mature. Of course, you’ll find that’s when it’s at its most tender. You can grow even tomatoes as a catchcrop! If you sow only ultra-early varieties (like Siberian, Scotia, Alaskan Fancy, Sasha’s Altai, etc) they may ripen in as little as 60 days, sun permitting, and – in temperate climes – can be harvested by early August.
You can set the tomato transplants right up against sweet corn, even winter cabbage, and set them out together in early June. When the main crops need their space, sacrifice the tomatoes.
Do you need a large garden for these ‘intensive growing’ plans? No. With the ISP strategy of intensive organic gardening, you can grow as much as 35lb of food annually in an area little bigger than a frisbee!
Dr John Yeoman PhD is chairman of the center for natural gardening ideas, the Gardening Guild. You’ll find dozens of clever tips for intensive growing – to gain more food from your garden with less expense and labor – in his big book Lazy Secrets for Natural Gardening Success. Get it entirely free now at:
http://www.gardeningguild.org/lazy
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