What’s up next?

May and June bring fruiting crops including tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, and squash. Each year we navigate a delicate balancing act of giving our Spring crops a chance to reach their full maturity and finding room for new Summer crops. Many longer season brassicas like broccoli, cabbage, and kale will be in the garden well into the Summer. So what can you do? 

We like to take advantage of beds of greens like arugula, spinach, or mustard greens that can act as a living mulch for larger fruiting crops. Minimal interference is needed to pull out the center of greenery patches for a tomato seedling. Similarly, planting between head lettuces will give Summer crops room to grow as the heads come out. Keep in mind that, as Summer crops grow tall, they may shade out the lower plants around them. In the heat of the Summer, leafy greens don’t mind some shade but more demanding veggies like broccoli, kales, and cabbages should get as much sun as possible! Once Spring crops start coming out of the garden, a second succession of Summer crops can be added to the new space.

Check out some real world examples of successional planting from our gardens below!

In this in-ground garden, we had a full bed of head lettuces where we needed to plant eggplant. Many of these heads of lettuce are sizing up and will be harvested soon. Meanwhile, the eggplant seedlings are small enough to fit in between the heads. The eggplants will grow taller, giving the lettuce shade as it get’s hotter, and by the time the eggplant needs more room, the lettuce will be harvested.

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In this raised bed, we fit three new tomato plants while allowing head lettuces and spinach to continue to grow. Much like the garden pictured above, the tomatoes will grow in between the head lettuces, which will be harvested by the time the tomatoes need space. The bed of spinach, on the other hand, can be harvested continuously underneath the new tomato plant and will provide a “living mulch” to keep the ground moist and cool.

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Our Practices: Plant Perennials!

 

In our March blog post, we kicked off a new series by laying out our top ecological values in our landscapes and gardens. We strive for the landscapes that we steward to:

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  • Build the soil ecosystem, restoring our rapidly disappearing topsoil

  • Minimize the need for fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides

  • Catch stormwater, decreasing the threat of floods and reducing run-off and erosion

  • Trap carbon in the soil

  • Support biodiversity and native wildlife

  • Reduce and responsibly use waste

Last time, we discussed the importance of avoiding soil disturbance to achieve the above goals. Today we want to share the importance of:

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2. Incorporating Perennials

    • Perennials bring a permanence to our gardens that annual crops just can’t provide. While annuals are removed from the garden season by season, perennials stay in the ground year after year. This means that they disturb the soil less and provide year round habitat and food for wildlife. But their permanence also gives them the opportunity to grow a robust root system that holds soil in place (reducing erosion), to dig down deep (breaking up soils and accessing hard to reach nutrients), and to foster an extensive relationship with soil biology (which won’t have to be reestablished every season).

    • Our favorite perennials serve many purposes.

      • Fruit: Brambles, bushes, and trees can provide the above benefits while supplying delicious fruit and berries for people and birds alike.

      • Herbs: Lavender, sage, thyme, and oregano are all hardy perennial herbs which make excellent ornamental plants as well as sources for culinary herbs. Their small, compound flowers are ideal for pollinators and beneficial insects.

      • Pollination: We like to plant native flowering perennials like milkweed, cone flowers, and black-eyed susans to provide nectar and habitat for native pollinators. 

      • Dynamic Accumulation: Plants like comfrey are credited as dynamic accumulators which send down deep taproots to pull nutrients up to the top of the soil where neighboring plants can access them.

    • To keep from disturbing your perennials’ roots, we don’t recommend growing them in raised beds with annual crops. Rather, we recommend that you grow them nearby enough that they will attract pollinators and through-out your property to maximize their benefit.

 
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