Intercropping and Successive Planting

Purple Cauliflower and English Spinach

As our winter planning is becoming our spring planting, I find myself continually thinking about the scale we are planting on now, compared to our home garden. There are actually quite a few similarities to the planning involved in a home garden which has a continual food supply and the CSA which requires 8-18 diverse items each week.  One of the big Ah-Ha moments in our home garden was that of intercropping and successive planting.

Broad Beans and Purple Broccoli

Let's look at an Autumn planted bed of broad beans.  They make some growth and then go dormant through winter.  Then before we even think winter is over, they start growing again.  That is three months when other vegetables which require less time in the ground, can be sharing the space.

Here is where intercropping slots into the home garden offering a bounty of meals while the longer maturing vegetables are still growing.  In a bed of broad beans we can have beet root, lettuces, spinach, rocket and broccoli all planted around the broad beans.  The spinach, rocket and lettuce were harvested all winter.  The broccoli began to grow and produce in August.  By now, when the broad beans are thigh high, the lettuce, spinach and beet root are done.  The broccoli is sending out side shoots and soon will be thrown to the chickens, and the broad beans are flowering and beginning to grow pods.  The bed has been under cultivation for six months and produced a range of seasonal vegetables. And the broad beans are just coming on for their big "Hoorah!"

Mixed into this as well are alyssum and calendula - great flowers to kick start your beneficial insect population ahead of the Spring aphids!

Autumn planted bed in early Spring

In the bed next to it, there are green and purple cauliflower, broccoli, beet root, silver beet, lettuce, rocket and spinach.  The slow growing cauliflowers were next to fast growing pak choy.  The fast growing lettuce was next to a slower growing beet root.  Rocket was grown and cut ruthlessly when it was young and then another few plants were tucked into the already growing bed. The spinach produced all winter and only in September began to send up its seed head, just as the cauliflower was growing bigger and smothering it.

This may sound too demanding for the home vegetable plot.  But really it is as simple as transplanting long season extended harvest crops such as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, broad beans, silverbeet with the spacing recommended and then tucking in quicker growing things such as rocket, radish, lettuce, coriander, spinach, beetroot, bok choy, into the spaces around those plants also giving them the recommended distance.

We transplant broccoli with a 16-18 inch spacing which is ample to fit two heads of mini cos lettuce such as ‘Double Density’ or ‘Sweetheart Gem’. Coriander combines well with kale. We eat alot of spinach so that was tucked in everywhere knowing that it would never get very big, as we harvest it so frequently.

lettuce, coriander and spinach

When you are planning your summer beds, again first plan your long season plants like tomatoes, capsicum, eggplants, pole beans, add beneficial plants such as basil and shorter growing marigolds and then fill the space and bed edges with crops successively planted such as spinach, rocket, radish, bok choy, coriander, and lettuce.

The three sisters planting of corn, pumpkins and beans is another example. We find this works well with pole beans eaten dried and flint corn.

In addition to increasing your harvest, these combinations, especially when herbs and flowers are included, also can reduce the impact of pests.

When we first started doing this in our home garden, we used graph paper and marketed out circles representing the amount of space each transplant needed at 1 week old, 4 weeks old, 8 weeks old. The information is on most packets. This helped us visualize the process and soon we could lay out the transplants just by eye.

Scheduling Vegetable Plantings for Continuous Harvest has a great chart to help with your planting planning.  Although the varieties available here in Australia differ, the information is still very comparable. A little planning now can ensure a continuous harvest of a variety of crops throughout the summer and autumn!

Summer tomato bed with quick growing pak choy sharing the space