Interplanting For Continuous Harvest From Your Garden

We had lots of rain last month. It kept my garden moist, perfect for seeds to sprout. I enjoyed the lazy days that I didn’t have to water. All I did was watching the garden through the window with a coffee mag in my hand as the ground had a good drink of water. ‘Sweet.’ I thought. When the blue sky arrived, I was surprised by how much plants can grow in a few days. New seeds sprouted and climbing vegetables grew so much!! They now require more support. I was delighted to see the growth and enjoyed looking after them. By the time I finish supporting all tomato plants on the stakes, I could tell which seeds didn’t sprout. There were a few empty spots in the garden. Well, that’s OK. I wasn’t disappointed. I know that not all seeds sprout. In fact I was excited about what to plant in the empty spot next. There are a few plants I wanted to try sowing. Spring here gives many choices. At the seed shop, I found new variety of seeds. There is now ‘all year round cauliflower’ in the market!! I’m delighted again!! I can grow the winter vegetable all year around!! How wonderful is that!! The particular cauliflower takes 15 weeks to maturity so I decided to get some of quick growing seeds from the new variety too. Chinese Broccoli, Perpetual Spinach. They reach to their maturity in 8 to 10 weeks. I’m trying planting them around the cauliflower in the interplanting way. In this way I can aim for continuous harvest.

The idea of interplanting is, grow some quick growing plants around slow growing plants while the slow grower is still small and doesn’t take much space yet. By the time the slow grower takes larger space, the quick grower is ready to harvest and leave more space for the slow grower. Basically it’s a smart way of using the same space for more yield.

Other interplanting I’ve tried so far are, radish around tomatoes, replace the radish with rockets when tomato is still small, lose leaf lettuce and pak choy around cucumbers that are grown vertically. Above-ground, low height plants are good ground covers. I like to plant some dwarf marigold around tomato to repel insects too.

My corns are growing nicely. I’m planting climbing beans around the corn so that the beans can climb on the corn. Oh boy! It’s so fun! Harvest after harvest. It’s amazing what the mother earth can do.

Happy gardening!