The Modern Victory Garden

There are many of us who have limited space availability for food production gardening and yet still manage to produce a tremendous amount of our own food supply.   This post is part of a blog series devoted to exploring the many techniques available to optimize food production gardening.    There are quite a few topics that relate to this pursuit - including (among others):

• Crop Selection
• Intensive Planting Practices
• Season Extension
• Soil Management & Fertility

Focusing on Crop Selection kicked off the blog series.     Now we are exploring Intensive Planting Practices.   Intensive planting techniques generally include a combination of planting in raised beds (either double dug or otherwise greatly amended and improved), closely spaced planting, intercropping and succession planting, and the use of vertical growing techniques – all for the purpose of producing the same amount of food in approximately 20% of the space used by traditional row gardening practices.   To date, we have discussed the topics of Raised Beds and Closely Spaced Planting.   This week we will keep moving through the intensive planting techniques by spending some time discussing intercropping and succession planting.                        

Intercropping and Succession Planting –                       

The goal is to maximize food production from a given growing area in the allotted time that our individual growing season provides.   Intercropping is the practice of growing different plants together in the same area to optimize yield.   Succession planting is the practice of maximizing productivity of garden space by having a new crop ready to plant as soon as an earlier crop is harvested.   Both of these intensive planting techniques can dramatically improve production per square foot of growing area.               

Intercropping can be used in several different ways providing different potential benefits.   The first use is to plant fast growing and/or shallower rooted and potentially shade tolerant crops in between plantings of larger and slower growing crops.   Large plants such as brussel sprouts, broccoli, cabbages, corn, etc, are spaced widely apart when first planted so that when they eventually reach maturity - they are properly spaced such that the leaves of the plants barely touch the leaves of adjacent plants and the roots are given adequate room.    However, while the plants are young and small - the required spacing leaves large areas of the growing bed essentially unused and unproductive.   Intercropping puts that unused bed space to work!   Planting lettuce between larger plants (like broccoli or tomatoes etc) is a great example of this technique.   The lettuces are fairly shallow rooted and actually benefit from the partial shade created by the maturing large plants as the growing season progresses.   Ultimately the faster growing crops (like lettuce) generally produce their harvests and then conclude long before the larger and slower growing crop is at the height of it’s production.   Pulling the spent second crop not only makes room for the maturing larger plants, but opens up and aerates the soil for the remaining larger plants.        

Another variation on this is to grow plants that physically complement one another, such as planting shallow and deep-rooted items intermixed together (beans interplanted with deep-rooted corn for example).   The combination of deep and shallow rooted items improves soil structure because plants with root systems at differing depths and widths in the soil open up the soil at differing levels and utilize nutrients from a greater span of soil layers.   This practice also allows more closely spaced plantings because the adjacent intercrops do not crowd each other for root room.    One plant uses the upper soil layer and the adjacent is spreading its roots out by burrowing down deeper.

Another intercropping technique is to use an under story planting of either a shade appreciative crop (such as cucumbers which like heat, moisture, a well drained soil , and some shade in the height of summer) or a green manure crop.   Green manure intercropping provides weed suppression and water retention while the main crop is finishing up and the green manure crop then enjoys a head start going into the winter.   Chosen carefully, the intercropping plant can also provide nutrient benefits to the main harvest crop, such as when a nitrogen fixing plant such as beans or clover are interplanted with a heavy nitrogen consumer such as corn.   The classic intercropping example is the “Three Sisters” combination of planting corn, beans, and squash.                        

The beans use the structural support of the corn to grow up upon while providing nitrogen for the corn and the squash.   The squash spreads out under the other plantings providing a living mulch and is content to grow in partial shade while the corn and beans reach up for the sun they love.   This classic combo maximizes bed space because it provides three crops in one bed area and the plants structurally complement one another.   However, I personally have found the three sisters combo to be somewhat difficult to do well because the squash plant vines tend to make it difficult to get to the other plants to harvest them!   My variation on that is to skip the squash altogether and use bush beans or half runner bean varieties intercropped with corn.   Full runner or pole beans tend to overrun anything but the tallest of corn varieties, but half runners or bush beans work pretty well.              

There are potential problems with intercropping that should be considered as you use this technique.   The obvious ones are the potential for overcrowding and too much shade creation for even plants that will tolerate (or prefer) some shade.   Careful planning can avoid most of those potential problems and the benefits of intercropping are considerable.               

Most of us have growing seasons long enough that multiple plantings of many crops are possible.   In my area, cold tolerant crops planted early in the season that are harvested and removed no later than mid July can be followed by another reasonably fast growing and cold tolerant crop that will produce well into the fall and even winter months. I   use this technique a lot.   I plant a patch of early spring spinach or garden peas, which usually are concluded by late June or early July.  These are followed by a planting of broccoli, cabbage, or carrots that produce a good fall and over wintering harvest.   Having plants started and ready to plant out just as the other crop concludes, makes this process even more efficient.   This is why many of us start seeds in flats even during the summer months for items that many consider easier to just direct seed in the garden.   The reason we go to that trouble is that we want to have plants ready to go into the ground as soon as the bed is opened up and available.   This practice gives a big jump on growing the second crop which is usually racing against the clock to get to maturity before the approaching colder fall weather arrives and sun strength and day length are reduced.   You may recall that I did this with the bed that had my 2009 spring planted pea patch.   The peas produced a heavy harvest that was completed on the Fourth of July weekend.   The bed was then planted up the very next week with sturdy seedling starts that I had going of broccoli, kohlrabi, and some loose leaf cabbages.                 

(Pea Patch in Early June) 

(Harvesting the Peas on July 3rd)

(The Same Bed Planted Up with Cole Crops on July 11th)

(Same Bed Two Weeks Later on July 25th)

(Mature Cole Crops - Mid September)                 

Succession planting is one of the more important and effective intensive planting techniques available to the food production gardener.   Next week in part 4 of the Intensive Planting topic we will look closer at another very important method of maximizing output from our modern victory gardens – vertical growing.