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How to Grow More in Less Space: The Secrets of Interplanting and Companion Planting
264 Plays3 years ago
Welcome to Hort Culture, the podcast for plant lovers! In this episode, we'll explore the benefits of interplanting and companion planting, two techniques that can help you maximize your garden space and productivity. Interplanting is when you grow two or more crops together in the same area, such as lettuce and radishes, or corn and beans. Companion planting is when you choose plants that have beneficial effects on each other, such as repelling pests, attracting pollinators, or improving soil quality. We'll share some tips and tricks on how to plan and implement them in your own plantings. Whether you have a small raised bed or a large field plot, interplanting and companion planting can help you grow crops with less work and more fun. Tune in to Hort Culture and get ready to learn and grow!
WVU Companion Planting Publication
Home Vegetable Gardening in Kentucky Manual
THE "NEW" COMPANION PLANTING: ADDING DIVERSITY TO THE GARDEN
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Hort Culture'
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Hort Culture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture.
00:00:16
Speaker
I'm not gonna lie, I don't get sick of hearing myself say the intro. Welcome, everybody. It's a horror culture. I'm so impressed I can sound so, you know, professional. It's very alluring. Oh, yes, welcome, the horror culture. It's inviting me. I feel invited into your culture. How's everybody doing today? How's everybody feeling? I mean, a lot of hand gestures right now. Nobody just saw that. We're gonna have to do a video just so we capture all of this extra goodness. We're missing a lot of goodness. We're on it. Built-in ASMR.
Differences Between Planting Techniques
00:00:44
Speaker
Yes. I have a question for you, Alexis. Is it a good question or a stupid question? It's a dumb question. Of course. It could be a dumb question. Could you, I mean, what is the distinction that you've got interplanting, companion planting, permaculture guilds? Are these the same thing? Are these different things? I would throw in living mulch. You would. That's just a euphemism for weeds, Brett.
00:01:14
Speaker
I mean, we're not judging your weedy garden. You can call it living mulch if you want. That's fine. Living mulch till I go in with the Roundup. That's it. The non-selective broad spectrum. Well, so kind of yes and no. I think the basic action of all of them are pretty much the same, but the way we think about those plants, at least in my brain, is a little bit different. These are interplanting, companion planting.
00:01:42
Speaker
Yeah, and those are the two that I really think about concept and permaculture, which might be more perennial kind of focus. Yeah, we should do we should do some permaculture episodes.
00:01:53
Speaker
Oh yeah, that would be fun. That would be fun. And I think, well, and I think a lot of the things we talk about are all permaculture basics, but like thinking of bringing all of these together into one permaculture episode. Yeah, would be neat. So, so yeah, I think if we feel like kind of thinking about interplanning versus companion planting, Ray jump in here, but the way I think of interplanting is more spatial.
00:02:18
Speaker
So using interplanting as a way to maximize your space by putting as many crops in there as you can, as well as keeping an area, a space like weed free is kind of how I think about interplanting versus companion planting is more how do those plants mutually benefit each other as far as like, is there nitrogen fixation? Can we think about the three sisters of
00:02:43
Speaker
uh, you know, beans, corns and pumpkins or melons or whatever growing together, using each other as a structure. Right. Um, and you know, or, or even insect repellent insects, you know, you always hear about marigolds. I have a whole thing about marigolds, but trap cropping. So it's kind of a, to me, when I speak about them and the way, the social aspect, the culture of horticulture, so to speak,
00:03:08
Speaker
is that companion planting is more about the mutually beneficial versus inner planting. They don't necessarily help each other in either way, but they don't hurt each other either and we're putting them all into one space together. Does that feel okay to everybody else? Sure. Our discussion today, I was trying to think of the
Companion Planting in Various Scales
00:03:29
Speaker
scale of our discussion because so much of what we do involves big and little scales.
00:03:35
Speaker
and medium scales, probably when we have a discussion on both companion planting and everything else along with that intercropping. Some of that may be more common on a smaller scale in smaller spaces, but that's not to say that on a medium and large scale that you don't see some of the same concepts.
00:03:56
Speaker
of interplanting and specifically companion planting, I see that on a little bit larger commercial scale every now and again. But more often I see that on a small scale. Do you guys observe that too, like in smaller spaces? I think it depends on the nature of it. So could I clarify real quick or ask, so you gave examples, the Three Sisters and the
00:04:24
Speaker
marigolds and tomatoes, those were, you were saying those were examples of companion planting, is that right? Right, right. So can you give me some like, not necessarily crop pairings, but just examples of what interplanting might look like species wise? So interplanting would be, you know, remember we're thinking more spatially about this. So cramming as many plants as we can into a space, just so we get more out of that space and or for weed control in that space. So
00:04:54
Speaker
One really good one is like lettuce, like a leaf lettuce underneath your tomato. So you plant your tomato down the middle of the row and on either side of that tomato we plant a shallow rooted lettuce early in the season that is done by the time that tomato comes out and shades out that planting. For a weed pressure one, one I'm personally looking into is
00:05:16
Speaker
using radishes, which are a root crop. They're very fast growing and intermixing them with a very slow growing crop. And so you're covering the soil with something that's easy to take out. You know, maybe you do sell that or maybe you just use it almost like a cover crop, but you can pull that out. You can probably get a couple of successions of it and you're keeping weeds from building up until those slow growing plants have filled in that canopy to prevent weed pressure.
00:05:45
Speaker
Gotcha. So in that case, you're using that slower or that faster thing to cover the soil so that you don't have to weed in between. So if I'm imagining my garden and I've got tomato plants and everywhere around it is completely bare ground.
00:05:59
Speaker
I wanted to interplant, I would think about coming in and putting something else down that's going to also be growing right next to it. So I'm not going to have all my tomato plants out there by themselves. I'm going to have other stuff planted right up against it or in the rows in between or wherever. Is that kind of what you're... Yeah, something that's not going to damage it. You're not going to have trouble harvesting. It's a way to think of kind of time and space. Yeah, time in that aspect of maybe you're harvesting before your other crop comes into
00:06:29
Speaker
you know, fruition or whatever. So is there, is there a difference here from cover cropping?
Cover Cropping and Soil Improvement
00:06:34
Speaker
So cover cropping is usually Ray, please jump in, but cover cropping is usually like, um, something that we could be using it for weed pressure, but we're not putting our crop in with it typically. So it's something where it's another crop or just for like organic amendment, like to increase your soil organic, right? We're incorporating it and then stabilization.
00:06:55
Speaker
Right. And then coming in with our main crop, they're not happening at the same time, in the same space, I should say. So sometimes people will put like a clover in their alleyways between their tomato rows because it's easier to walk in, and clover also is a nitrogen fixer. So in theory, it becomes more available to its tomatoes, but those tomatoes themselves are in plastic. And so that's not exactly what we're talking about. We're talking about plants sharing the same space with interplanting.
00:07:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think it's something that where it's like right on the boundary I was thinking of is somebody who plants a cover crop and then does like a crimping sort of thing and uses that mostly done plant as like a mulch to plant living mulch. Yeah, right, right. It's like in that boundary like a lot of these things, you know, there's these edge cases where
00:07:43
Speaker
It's all a Venn diagram and sometimes you get something that's kind of a little bit of both. Yeah, because I should Josh horticulture is an edge case hearing. That's what we're all about. Living on the edge and being unique. OK, that's that's where we that's where we're at. Yeah, that's a good point. Because I think that that kind of practice is done at a very large scale. Right. Yeah, I have seen 3000 acres of. Of water pumpkins.
00:08:12
Speaker
planted into a crimped rye or wheat cover crop. And I mean, in principle, you know, we have terms to differentiate things, but in general, we're trying to keep the soil covered, reduce erosion loss, improve, you know, soil organic matter. But we're also trying to keep that soil cool in some cases too. But in this case, we're doing it all at the same time and they're both living side by side.
00:08:40
Speaker
Is that right?
Effectiveness of Companion Plants for Pest Control
00:08:41
Speaker
So half the battle of this discussion, you all, is just clarifying. And, you know, we sometimes throw these terms in together, but I'm glad you guys are differentiating out the terms because interplanning, companion planting, living mulches, all of this, you know, sort of ties in together, but they have their own unique little caveats. And it really boils down to what your objectives for undertaking these things. And that's, you know, the rest will take care of itself.
00:09:11
Speaker
is based on your objectives. And I like to stress particularly with not to pick on companion planting, but there's lots of information online about different methods, different plants and companion plantings and doing things like either attracting beneficial insects or repelling the not so desirable insects. But that doesn't take the place of scouting. And even if you do a good job setting up your companion planting,
00:09:38
Speaker
That may not take care of all of your issues in any giving year because I find that with companion planting and concepts like that, that it's highly variable. It just varies a great deal from person to person. They do little things that they might not even understand they're doing. Or it definitely varies from area to area and year to year based on pest pressure and weather.
00:10:05
Speaker
It depends on how well something like companion planting works and the reason that you're doing that practice. And there's lots of different practices, lots of different reasons you would do those practices. Can we tease out the insect repellent for companion planting? Using companion planting as insect repellent is a burr in my butt.
00:10:26
Speaker
Um, so here we go. There's, there's probably at least a couple of people listening that are like, are ready to shut this off because I said that because they might use it and it works for them. And that's great. But I think of.
00:10:43
Speaker
it less as a repellent, like planting a marigold next to my cabbage plant for cabbage loopers. I don't think of the marigold as repelling that cabbage looper and it sees that marigold and goes, oop, and it turns around and flies away. I think of it more as a trap crop. And so I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just thinking reframe the way, reframe your brain around how this works. Be realistic about your expectations.
00:11:10
Speaker
Trap, crop, trap, crop. Can you expand on that for me? That's like a trap house, right? Yeah, sort of. Like the drum tracks? He's going to start talking about nasturtiums, I guarantee. Here we go. Well, nasturtiums are up there. I was actually going to talk about bell peppers and sunflowers. Okay. So this is something that we see in both large and small operations. And I'm bringing this up because it was a
00:11:35
Speaker
recent research project at UK in the entomology department. So you have all your bell peppers in a plot, a square of bell peppers. And what they did was a few feet out from that, enough to get their implements through or whatever it is. So it might be 20 feet, whatever. They planted a box of sunflowers around that and the
00:11:56
Speaker
Purpose was so stink bugs are a really big problem for bell peppers stink bugs love them some sunflowers a lot more than bell pepper. So it's like, you know, trying to tell a two year old that, you know, to eat the broccoli instead of eating the chicken nugget, right? They're going to eat the chicken nugget first.
00:12:13
Speaker
So distinct bugs then go to the sunflowers and they can either, they'll stay in the sunflowers and sometimes depending on the timing, you don't have to do anything. They'll stay with the sunflowers long enough for you to get your crop out of the field, those bell peppers out. But a lot of time we use them as a trap crop in the way that we're going to spray that trap crop. And so we only are hitting the sunflowers, which are not a crop that we're giving for, you know, human consumption.
00:12:36
Speaker
And I say spray. It can be any spray. It can be an oil, it can be organic, whatever it is. We're only treating that small amount, not having to treat our actual products. We don't have to worry about harvest times, anything like that. And then, you know, you don't have to worry. There's just so many things. So think of it more as that marigold is going to attract that. I use them with Japanese beetles. So Japanese beetles love marigolds. So I'm going to pull the Japanese beetles away from my other crops.
00:13:05
Speaker
to the marigolds. I'm gonna keep them in the marigolds. I know to go there to kill them. And I'm gonna take the pressure off of my other crops, which maybe couldn't take those Japanese beetles as well as marigold would. So when I think about companion planting, I think of them as a trap crop and a lot less as a repellent. Because when it comes down to it, there's tons of smells out there. They're gonna go around that marigold. They don't care. So you're telling me that stink bugs
00:13:35
Speaker
and Instagram influencers both drawn to fields of sunflowers. Essentially, they're the same thing. I see. So in that case, the thinking about the marigold and the tomato is that the marigold is going to draw the
00:13:50
Speaker
the whatever the bugs are away from the tomatoes. But if you just put a marigold right next to the tomato, it's going to eat the marigolds and then move on and eat the tomatoes. Right. And so sometimes these companion plants are used. We haven't talked about indicator plants, which is sort of the same thing. So indicator plants, people will use these in greenhouses. They use them outside. Like I said, I use marigolds for this because I know they're the number one food source for whatever
00:14:15
Speaker
Problem I have so Japanese beetles are a good one because everybody has a big issue with those and so I know that I'm gonna start scouting my marigolds remember we're scouting still for those Japanese beetles and so if I need to do any type of prevention like if I'm gonna net my cabbage or my broccoli
00:14:32
Speaker
I know to net them before I have a problem because my indicator plant has told me that these insects are here and it's time to do control measures on the valuable crops. So that's another kind of form of companion planting is using one or two plants in a larger area as your indicators.
00:14:54
Speaker
thoughts, sorry, that's the burr that I get, because I get a lot of questions on that. Yeah, the trap crop stuff, I mean, like, as you're saying, it's a... Sometimes, and I'm not... Folk wisdom has a lot to offer and it's highly valuable, but in some cases, the
00:15:12
Speaker
companion planning stuff can kind of veer into the magical thinking side of how we're approaching this stuff. And so having a little bit of a healthy respect for that, but at the same time, the trap crop stuff, I mean, it's validated. There is research out there about it. And if you look and see, look up different trap crops for different types of
00:15:35
Speaker
things that you're growing. I know that like blue hubbirds, for instance, are really susceptible and highly attractive to I think squash vine borers and maybe some other stuff too. And so that's a typical one that you'll see sometimes. And you'll also have, there's a whole other realm here of co-planting where you think about building habitat for beneficial insects that eat the insects that are problems on your crops. That's a whole other thing that's separate from this and maybe a different conversation at some point in the future.
Diverse Plantings vs. Monocultures
00:16:02
Speaker
So in general though, you're talking about a companion plant is often referred to, or as a trap crop, it's often referred to as a companion plant on the insect side. That's good, I hadn't thought of it that way.
00:16:16
Speaker
Another kind of addition to this discussion is that this concept of monocultures and the fact that the way insects find crops, you know, both by sight and smell, and it doesn't take much to confuse that. And it's this whole concept of ground level complexity, simply meaning a variety of crops thrown in together and nonrelated crops.
00:16:41
Speaker
intermingled is harder for insects to key in on than one large monoculture. And that's just an emerging field of research is pretty interesting. And there's a lot to that. And even years ago, I think I may, and it was just a personal observation. This is not research, but we had like a quarter acre of green beans or something that was off to the side of one of our fields. And we got busy with cattle and tobacco and other enterprises on the farm, and we did not have time
00:17:10
Speaker
to take care of these field of beans. And we've always had heavy insect pressure in this area. And it was either Johnson grass or Cocker burrs, if I can pronounce that. Alexis said that you're the... That is the burr. Cocker burr. But a lot of weeds grew up in this bean field. And it was the best beans that we had ever grown. And we were like, huh, what in the world? We had no insect pressure for two years in a row. Weather and things led us off. We planted the beans, could not take care of them properly.
00:17:39
Speaker
And then we went back to having perfectly clean fields now this is anecdotal but you know we talked to the extension agent at the time my father did years ago and he discussed the same concepts that we're talking about now and he thought it may have had something to do with.
00:17:54
Speaker
just target confusion of the insects that were a problem at the time. But there's a lot of research that confirms that is that these large monocultures, just the opportunity for to have a pest come in and do some major damage is increased when you just have a large planting of one thing. It's like an olfactory camouflage.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And it's a texture. It's a visual camouflage. It's both is what they're finding, depending on the insect. So there's something to that too. And I think people benefit from that sometimes. If nothing else, it's just that there's a bunch of different crops.
00:18:32
Speaker
in the same area, so it's harder to key in on. So that may be something, too, that's kind of related concept to what you guys are talking about. It's that real tree green bean pattern. That's it. We may need to patent that, the camo bean. Camo bean. It's a good thing, guys. We'll have mossy oak and real tree in a bidding war over here. And we will sell weed seeds to go along with it to camouflage it. It's the camo kit.
00:19:00
Speaker
We do the full on hunting channel where like we're in a tree stand like whispering to each other, just watching the bugs not eat or eat or feel. Watching the beetles just get confused.
00:19:13
Speaker
It's like something deer eat and they're eating the camo bean. Yeah. We've caused one problem and solved another. Let's shut the podcast down and get started on product development right now. Why are we doing it with our lives? Right now. Another way companion planting can be used is through nitrogen fixation.
Legumes and Nitrogen Fixation
00:19:35
Speaker
Using legumes to fix that nitrogen for your
00:19:41
Speaker
ideal crop. So that's something that people will do with your beans. Could you give me a couple of legumes? What are we talking about? What is a legume? What are some examples? So pretty much any of your beans, there are legumes that don't fix nitrogen. So like redbud trees are a legume, right? They create a bean pod. If you ever seen anything that produces something that looks like a bean pod is in the legume family.
00:20:03
Speaker
So peas, beans, alfalfa is in the lake. Is it on a legume or is it just an iatrogen picture? It is. It's a legume. I don't really actually know what the seed of alfalfa looks like. So, you know, horticulture over here. But yeah, so anything that's going to produce like a beet. Clover. Clover, yeah. Clover is another good one. Peas, Austrian winter peas in terms of cover crops. I just, just sometimes people are jumping. I feel like vetch might be. I don't know.
00:20:32
Speaker
I think vetch is. I think vetch is. Yeah. Josh is our behind the scenes researcher. I think it is. Black locust. Yes, it is. Harry vetch is. I think it is. Black locust is. It's that kind of bean and pea and lentil vibe of stuff. That's one of the classic examples we always give is you get that secondary benefit of the nitrogen fixation there.
00:20:57
Speaker
Bring in good microbes, things like that. A lot of people use these legumes as cover crops. Those are incorporated into the soil and then you're putting your stuff in later, but you can use them interplanted. Again, we go back to the three sisters, which
00:21:15
Speaker
We should just do a whole episode on those because I have learned so much more about them and how we've essentially downplayed all of that. My mom was in fact, my mom always did that system even though it was a pain for me and we didn't do it on the production side, did it on the large home garden side, but she did that every year because that's what her family did and she loved it and it worked well together. It was sort of a, it had one kind of help the other kind of thing and it was neat and she always did that.
The Traditional Trio: Corn, Beans, and Squash
00:21:41
Speaker
She used that system and that's how she grew
00:21:43
Speaker
beans, corn, and then use the broad leaves of a cucurbit, usually pumpkins, to shade the ground.
00:21:50
Speaker
But yeah, she did that all the time. And I just thought it was a big hot mass. My dad and I are like, oh, we like monocultures. What is this? We like straight lines. How are we supposed to till this? My mom's like, not organized. You don't have to till it because it shades itself. Yeah. So that was a, it's a neat system. So you've done a lot of research on that, Alexis. Well, I haven't say a lot. I just have been like hearing a lot more reading, hearing whatever on how essentially we've just downplayed that entire system. And there was so much more to it.
00:22:19
Speaker
all the microbes, the science behind it, and just how we are like, oh, it's the corn, bean, and pumpkin, and it was more than that. We talked about soil in a previous podcast, and we talked about, you know, how do we create healthy soil? And the crops, like the Three Sisters system is a good example of that, where beans and corn, you know, take nutrients from different levels, not only that, but
00:22:43
Speaker
their roots penetrate the soil differently and they have different microbes that are associated with those crops and it adds to soil diversity and all of these things are pretty deep dives into soil benefits. All of those things and I read something somewhere that talked about like one of the best reasons to grow a tap rooted crop with a fibrous rooted crop is that the tap rooted crop would go down deeper
00:23:07
Speaker
grab nutrients where the fibrous rooted crops could not get to, they would bring it up into their plant tissue, then decay, go on the ground, and then make that available at a more shallow depth. And I thought that was really interesting. And that's assuming that you're leaving the biomass intact. You're leaving it there for the tap rooted crops, such as a cover crop. And I thought that was interesting. It was literally grabbing, some of these crops were grabbing deep level
00:23:32
Speaker
nutrients that other crops could not grab onto, bringing it up to the top of the soil surface and then kind of degrading back down into the soil and becoming available. It was pretty neat. Look at Ray just naturally moving us into interplanting. Moving on. Well, and you brought it in so beautifully just thinking about root system. So when you think about interplanting,
00:23:55
Speaker
These crops were putting right up next to each other. So you don't want to plant a fibrous root next to a fibrous root because they're going to compete. So you want to put in a root crop. You also want to think about speed of the crop. So I brought up radishes earlier. Radishes finish in like 30 days or something like that. So if you put that in with a crop that maybe has 100 days before it's going to fruit those days to maturity, then you can get a lot of radish crop out of there, which means you're
00:24:25
Speaker
preventing weeds from building up while that slower 100 day crop is coming in. You're getting more out of that and you're not competing with your long day crop. And so you really think about kind of that root system. Sunflowers are not a great, you know, we talk about them as they're a great trap crop. They're not really a great inner planting crop because they are, not only are they fast, which usually would be a good thing, but they're also very, very fibrous. They take a lot of nutrients very quickly.
00:24:53
Speaker
They're relatively high feeders as far as they're going to soak up nutrients a lot faster than some of your other crops will. They're just going to scavenge for it and find it before something else will. It's not the best for interplanting, but it can be used on those outskirts as a companion.
00:25:13
Speaker
intercropping combinations or uses or like I'm looking for to choose from this list of slow growers and slow and low grow or fast and low growers and or is it kind of a choose your own adventure pairing things and figuring things out? When I'm working with home gardeners, I encourage them first of all, of course, is to, you know, put in keywords if they're going to do a general search, you know, cooperative extension service and then put in keywords such as compatible companion plants garden.
00:25:42
Speaker
because there are lots of good now this is where my memory fails me and I have to go back to charts even after doing it for several years but there's a lot of good charts out there that
00:25:54
Speaker
pretty well, you know, researched about crops that work well with each other, both as inter crops and as companion crops. And I just basically keep, I've got three or four of my favorite charts that I use, but I'd encourage listeners to go do that. You don't have to memorize it if you can go look it up. So go look it up. Extension Service Companion, Plant Chart, Home Garden, something like that, keywords like that. And there's definitely great charts out there.
00:26:23
Speaker
that detail some of the ways that you can mix and match these crops. And Alexis has already touched on some of those factors you need to consider, such as timing, growth, high, you know, you don't want, you know, competition for sunlight or anything like that and crops that can benefit from an understory shading. All of those considerations are in nice charts and they're not too terribly hard to find.
00:26:47
Speaker
I would say you could probably generalize your leafy greens because they're usually pretty shallow rooted, pretty quick. They don't take up a lot of space, right? They're only a foot tall sometimes around there. So you're saying like Kales, lettuces. Kales, lettuces. Yeah, leaf lettuce especially. I would say away from your head lettuces though just because they're going to get
00:27:08
Speaker
Large they take a lot more time in there, but your leaf lettuces your kales spinach stuff like that And then a lot of your root crops will be fine. So carrots I've said radishes a hundred times because they're on my brain. I need to go buy some But carrots radishes some of your aliens. So alien family is going to be your onions garlic You know if you're growing flowers, they're alien drumstick aliens things like that now those those do in a sense
00:27:36
Speaker
can repel. I know some people who use them on the edges of their high tunnels for voles and things like that because there's that onion smell above and above ground and underground. And so they'll actually use them as kind of a deterrent, almost like a natural fence. And in that case,
00:27:56
Speaker
We do have some research that says that that's pretty effective. So if you have vole or mole trouble in an area, try maybe planting something in the alien, put your garlic on the outside, onions, whatever. I've successfully used it to ward off vampires myself.
00:28:11
Speaker
I mean, you're still with us. I've never been attacked. You're here. I mean, here we are. I'm Italian. So it's just garlic runs. Yeah. But, and then you're, and then your legumes where, you know, you can get, do something tall. So, you know, you can put your beans, your pole beans down the middle and then something short on the outside, like your lettuce or.
00:28:33
Speaker
you know, if you put, peas are a great one. So peas are early season and your lettuce likes it cold too and your spinach, you put your peas down the middle of the bed and then right outside those peas, you can do your spinach and your lettuce and then you're getting two crops in the same bed space that you would normally only have one. So I would say those are. I want to be the wet blanket here. Yeah, I know with the aliens. I really want to because we have to acknowledge the bear in the room and he's 500 pounds and he's angry.
00:29:00
Speaker
And he's a, before you go, I know, I know I had covered was rough on me, but let's, uh, I was not looking at you. I was looking at the zoom camera. It's coincidental that I was staring directly into your eyes. I'm so sorry here in the room busted. I'm busted. But before you go all in on any of these, uh, intensive, and I stress the word intensive gardening techniques where you're putting a bunch of plants really close together.
00:29:28
Speaker
Think about the general concept of what you're doing. You do have to really be careful, even though most of these things that, especially the ones Alexis just mentioned, are going to work well together. But think about, you know, you're affecting things like relative humidity and in some cases disease transmission. So the only thing that I would tell home gardeners, and I've worked with some gardeners that would, you know, that had just a little bit of gardening experience and they went all in on this system and did not have a good time of it for one reason or another.
00:29:56
Speaker
And a lot of it had to do with molds and mildews and funguses that really, because the plants were so close together, they didn't manage sunlight properly or didn't manage airflow properly. So those are things to consider too. You're right. And not everything plays well together. I can see it. She goes, okay, okay. Fine.
00:30:15
Speaker
I'm just like all about smashing stuff together, just as much as I can get out of an area. Sandwiches, I mean, hoagies, that's, yeah, that's my- B.O.T., baby. Just smash it together, yeah. And Alexis also, in addition to having a lot of experience, a lot of experience growing stuff is also, I think, a natural, very good grower, very attentive to plants in general.
Strategic Planting by Root Type and Growth
00:30:38
Speaker
And so for her, she's dreaming of all the possibilities, but keeping in mind that we are talking to some beginners and some folks who aren't used to reading stuff and seeing and kind of having a sense of how that might work. I think that's a great point, Ray. And one from timeline-wise, so we talked about, I feel like we haven't hit time and I have a really good example of that. Sorry, I'm just very excited about interplanetary.
00:30:45
Speaker
Thank you.
00:30:59
Speaker
timeline. So daffodils, right? Daffodils come up early. They come up before everything else. So you can put them in beds with other things that will come up later. So an example is yarrow. I don't know if people are familiar with yarrow, but a lot of your perennial crops or annuals, it could be annuals too, but a lot of perennials because you're not digging around in the bulbs.
00:31:20
Speaker
You can plant daffodils in there, they come up with flour, you harvest, you let them be pretty, whatever, and then you get this growth of the yarrow or this other perennial crop. And so it's starting to flourish when the daffodils are naturally dying. So you hit that timeline where again, you can have two crops in one bed, one is a bulb, one is a fibrous root system, and they play well together. So that's another way.
00:31:44
Speaker
uh, i'm i've started doing that and that's uh, very exciting for me to be able to fit more into that bed without hurting anything and Like ray was saying like that those mildews those inset though like a lot of that can come in to play but because these are Thriving at completely different times. I don't have to worry about their close spacing down in there yeah, and I think I think one of the things too is that the
00:32:13
Speaker
you don't have to go wholesale into the doing every bed this way. You can just like with most other things, you can try one row that way and see if your weeding is reduced considerably and see if you're, you know, the yield is better or see if the insect pressure is lower or whatever it may be. You don't have to, and I would say if you're doing this commercially and you're trying to integrate this, I wouldn't,
00:32:41
Speaker
It buys that you do that to just see, see if one row works well before you jump in. And if that whole row gets taken out and then you look up and find that daffodils are a vector for a disease that affects a certain crop that you grew, then you've lost that row and that's no big deal. But yeah, it did in general. I love these concepts of, you know, and you're getting into pretty,
00:33:06
Speaker
pretty high level science when you involve yourself in these things because you're blending so many concepts together and it's just really cool and I think it's one of those things if you kind of incrementally kind of dip your toes in and then dive all the way in you know when you're ready to do that it's so cool
00:33:24
Speaker
how much you can do with smaller spaces. We've talked a lot about production on some of the other podcasts and getting the most out of your space, especially folks that have things like high tunnels where you need to make those things productive.
Interplanting in Forestry
00:33:39
Speaker
I imagine people are probably looking for ways to make them more productive and maybe they can apply some of these concepts we're talking about today.
00:33:47
Speaker
to get that extra productivity out of there by intercropping, companion planting, and get some of the secondary benefits maybe from those things as well. I was just going to say this can be done for agroforestry as well. So interplanning, it's a much different scale, obviously, because you're going to give a tree a lot more room than you would give a tomato plant. But this is something that can be used from the home garden scale all the way up to fruit.
00:34:14
Speaker
fruit trees, nuts, those types of things. Sorry, anyways, I'm so excited. When you get excited about interplanting, where have you gone to find out more information or learn about stuff? Where have you seen examples, come across examples?
00:34:33
Speaker
knowledge that you've amassed over time. I'm just curious if you have thoughts on where people might go to learn more. I would say the starters, there's always some starter information. So our UK pub home gardening, which of course, anything usually home gardening can be used on a large scale as well, but our ID 128, which is
00:34:52
Speaker
Home Gardening in Kentucky has that shish kind of short little list about that but honestly a lot of the stuff that I've been talking about today and have tried to implement because It makes sense in my brain is I've just heard from other farmers So other farmers who have been doing it a lot longer and they're like, you know, you know A lot of them are on a really small scale and they just said, you know what? What what's the worst that can happen? I'm gonna plan a few of these in here and if they don't work I'll pull it out and if you know if it does work but I
00:35:20
Speaker
Then it's great and so that's where I've I've heard that it's just other other farmers and that's why I think it's cool to bring this to you all this way because not everybody knows another farmer that they can reach out to but it is kind of a New it's not a new idea at all, but it's like we're now putting it down on paper Yeah, I was on the science and why it works. Yeah, I was gonna say I mean it based on my I in my life I've been lucky enough to travel a decent amount and I would say a lot of
00:35:49
Speaker
non-Western or more accurately, maybe non-Eurocentric approaches to growing things do what we would call intercropping. They just do that. It's just the way it's done. It's called cropping. It's called cropping. It's called growing with us.
00:36:06
Speaker
I don't know, that's the podcast. Grow with us. That definitely is, as you say, it's not a new thing. Calling it intercropping and having charts and tables for it in this particular way is newer maybe.
00:36:21
Speaker
So I was just curious where you had found stuff out and it sounds like that network of producers is a good place to find out. I heard it on a podcast to be honest with you. A farmer podcast. I found a decent resource in the lead up to this episode that was, it's from West Virginia extension and it's focused mostly on kind of
00:36:41
Speaker
insect management pairings. So this is more the companion planting as opposed to the intercropping, but it has a good list of kind of horticultural crops, what you're trying to plant, and then good companions and also not what not to plant next to for that. There are some extensions on some of these topics. There's another one that we can probably add in. It's a link from Tennessee that kind of talks more about intercropping and kind of
00:37:11
Speaker
what are the important aspects of intercropping, which it lists as four, right? There's the spatial arrangement, how it's laid out, the density, the maturity date, so you get the timing kind of angle, and the plant architecture as they call it. So root versus vining, that sort of a thing.
00:37:31
Speaker
in some ways I'll have to look it up. I forget exactly which Extension University has this publication, but it's always been really good for me and it talks about companion planting, but it approaches it from they only review
00:37:46
Speaker
practices that are backed up by research trials. And it's really interesting. They refute some things, but they confirm other things. But it's interesting in that it's all vetted, you know, through the kind of the scientific process. And it's a really good review. It's basically a review of literature. And that's what makes it so interesting to me because companion planting particularly
00:38:11
Speaker
involves a lot of knowledge that's been passed down, which is wonderful.
Research Validation of Companion Planting Practices
00:38:15
Speaker
But it kind of works within that realm of why does this work if it works and it confirms it through research trials. And I'll try to put that in the show notes, the podcast description. I'll try to include that as well. But it's a really interesting quick read about three or four pages. But it talks about, you know, the more common scenarios that work and why they work and which research supports that. It's really good.
00:38:41
Speaker
If you have questions about interplanting, you can ask us through our Instagram at hort culture podcast. You can direct message to there or grab one of our emails. One of our emails will be in the show notes as well. So if you've got some specific questions, I mean, this is what we do is we help people answer
00:39:02
Speaker
Very broad to very specific questions and we'd be happy if you're just like I was thinking about throwing these two things together We can give you our experience if we have any or hash through why or what problems you might face Growing those two things together So I'll take a crack at some of this up here What do you think? okay, so so I think one of the things that we did was we we introduced and and we
00:39:31
Speaker
differentiated between companion planting and interplanting. They're a spectrum, but I think of companion planting is sort of like teammates. They're working together, helping each other out. Interplanting feels a little bit more like roommates who get along really well.
00:39:49
Speaker
They're sharing space. They're doing different things. They're maybe complimentary, but they're not directly helping each other. They're just taking up the space. There's not in each other's way. I like that. They're not in each other's way. I love that. In fact, they're complimentary. Somebody does the dishes, somebody cleans the bathroom, and everything's good.
00:40:08
Speaker
The advantages to doing either of these might be some variation on pest control, disease management. It might be covering the soil surface to keep things cool or to keep weeds down to reduce the weeding need for weeds. It could just be fitting more stuff into a smaller space if you're an intensive grower of some sort.
00:40:29
Speaker
But in general, there can be these complementary relationships between plants. And if we compare them together based on their strengths and weaknesses, we may be able to, especially in intensive systems, home gardening systems or small scale commercial systems, get more by doing better by the soil and by the environment that we're growing in. So does that sum us up pretty good? It's beautiful. Yeah. Awesome. Perfect.
00:40:55
Speaker
Well, again, if you want to hear more about this kind of topic, Alexis plugged the Instagram and the email. But really, please do reach out to us. We love hearing from you. Even if you just say, listen and enjoy it, we really, really love hearing from you. Again, we're trying to decide what the listener group is going to be called.
00:41:11
Speaker
We threw out true leaves last time, which sounds very cultish as I reflect on it now. How do you think about it? I was like, we're all going to have matching hoodies or something. I don't know. That seems a little over the line. Bring the candles. Are you like our plant peeps? I was just calling people my plant peeps. Plant peeps. I like that. So yeah, let us know what you want to be called. And if you just, like most horticultural topics, you just defy categorization.
00:41:39
Speaker
Let us know that too. We're just going to change it a lot. Thanks very much for all the support. It means a whole lot and we look forward to hearing from you soon. All right. Well, we will catch up with you next week. As we grow this podcast, we hope you grow with us. Join us next time. Have a great one.