Spring Interplanting Strategies: What Worked, What Flopped, and Why - Ep. 254

Karin Velez [00:00:00]:
I always encourage experimenting with new techniques in the garden, which is why I talk so often about interplanting and companion planting. These techniques are not as well known to a lot of gardeners, and it can take some time to break out of the habit of having everything planted in nice neat rows by themselves and move into closer spacing and even very intensive planting plantings. My experience this spring involved a lot of very close but strategic pairings in my raised planters, and I have my usual combinations both in my planters and in my in ground beds, like planting lettuce and green onions and sweet alyssum in and amongst my cabbage and my broccoli and my cauliflower, for example. That's something that I do every year, but I've usually been a little bit more cautious with the spacing in my raised beds and for a number of reasons, and I'll talk about those considerations in the episode today. I did try a couple of new combinations in some of my in ground beds this spring, but I really went for it this year in terms of pushing the limits of what I can grow in a very concentrated space in my raised beds. And let me tell you, the results have been kind of astonishing. Some of them have really knocked it out of the park, some of them could use some tweaking, and there are one or two that I will change up a little bit, but that will absolutely be repeated now every single year. So today on Just Grow Something, I will reveal to you eight new ways that I interplanted crops in my garden beds.

Karin Velez [00:01:34]:
How I did it, how well they worked, and what I'll change for next season. Hopefully you will be inspired to really push the envelope in your garden spaces too so that you can end up with fewer weeds, a higher yield, and more bang for your gardening buck. Let's dig in.

Karin Velez [00:02:18]:
So before we jump into spring interplanting, I have to share this with you. One of my mentees with the Beginning Farmer Rancher Grant Program, Rachel, asked me a question at the Farmers last weekend that I absolutely loved and now I have to ask you the same Question. So she said that she'd been listening to the podcast, and she mentioned that she noticed that a lot of the time, I sort of give the different vegetables their own Personas. So, for instance, I always say, you know, carrots are divas. And here is why I think carrots are divas kind of a thing. So she said this got her to thinking, and she asked me, what vegetable are you? I thought this was brilliant. I thought this was so fun. So I took some time to think, and I decided, I am okra. Now, stick with me here. Okay? Okra, right, can be planted just about anywhere. It's not super picky about putting their roots down. Even in less than ideal soil conditions. It can be very pretty if it wants to be, but that's not its main purpose, not the main reason behind why we grow okra. Too much exposure to okra can sometimes lead to irritation in some people. Other people can handle it just fine. It does just fine being totally neglected. But give it just a little bit of attention, and it can really take off.

Karin Velez [00:03:44]:
And then once okra gets going, it just keeps on going and going like kind of like the Energizer Bunny all season long until a hard freeze finally takes it down. I am okra. I think all of these things pertain to my personality and how I do things. So now it's your turn. So Rachel and her husband Michael both shared with me what their vegetable Personas are, and they both made total sense once they explained the characteristics, which was just super fun. So I want to know yours. If you're listening in Spotify or on YouTube, just drop your comment below. You can reply to this morning's email if you're on the email list, or you can send me a DM on socials.

Karin Velez [00:04:29]:
I want to hear what vegetable you are. I mean, I'll accept a fruit, too. Okay. If that's more appropriate for you, that's fine. So what vegetable or fruit defines you and why? Okay, let me know. I cannot wait to read these. Okay, so spring interplantings. What worked great for me, what needs to be tweaked, and is there anything that I'm just not going to repeat? Let's start with the in ground beds.

Karin Velez [00:05:00]:
And as I go through this, I will kind of give you the details on the sizes of the beds. And then once we move into the planters, I'll give you the direction or the. The dimensions on those with the in ground beds. I did sort of two new combinations. The first one was to start with planting lettuces. With sugar snap peas and then into tomatoes. So not only are we doing intercroppings with some of these, some of them are also interplantings into succession plantings or into relay plantings. Right.

Karin Velez [00:05:34]:
So this first bed area is really a 30 foot long, by, I think, 25 to 30 foot wide sort of square space. And so what I did was I took that 30 foot long bed and I broke it down into rows or beds that were five foot wide. And then we put up cattle panel for trellises. So we're running north to south, and the panels are on the west side of those beds. So obviously our sun is going east to west. Right. So I planted the sugar snap peas on the west side of those panels, and then I planted my lettuces in those beds on the other side of those panels. And so the idea with this was that the sugar snap peas would grow up the trellises.

Karin Velez [00:06:24]:
And as it got later in the season and it started to get warmer as the sun would go down on the west side of those beds, that the sugar snap peas could shade the lettuces. So those peas weren't going to get so tall early enough that it would impede the growth of those lettuces. But the hope was that once we started to get really hot, at least it would some afternoon shade, and that would extend the lifespan of those lettuces being harvested out of those beds once the soil warmed up. Because obviously these are two cool weather crops, right? The lettuces and the peas. But I needed to utilize that bed for the entire season. So I started planting my tomatoes and I did this on along the trellis, but on the other side from where the peas are. So if the trellis is running north to south and it's on the west side side of the bed, the peas were on the west side of the trellis and the tomatoes are on the east side. So they're still up against the trellis and the tomatoes or the, the lettuces are still in the beds, but the tomatoes are going in against the trellis as I'm pulling those lettuces out.

Karin Velez [00:07:34]:
So I would harvest the lettuce that was closest to the trellis first as I was interplanting those tomatoes. I will say the effect of having the peas shade the lettuce has worked beautifully. Normally, you know, this has been a very wet spring for us. And as a result, that has kind of kept the temperatures cool, and that intermittent rain has helped to keep the root zones cool on a lot of these plants. Plus of course, as usual, I am. I'm using heavy layers of straw mulch, too, so that's also keeping them cool. But I will say that that afternoon shade for those lettuces has done wonders for extending the season. Normally, you know, by the first week in June, the lettuces have turned bitter because it's just gotten too hot.

Karin Velez [00:08:26]:
But I harvested some beautiful iceberg lettuce out of those beds that was not bitter in any way, shape, or form. It was just succulent and crunchy and amazing. And before you come at me about it being iceberg lettuce, look, I know that the nutritional value isn't as high as that, but when you grow up iceberg in your own garden, it's different than what you're getting in the grocery store. You're not blanching it as much as as you know, you get in the grocery store. So it is getting more of that light and there's more nutrients involved. So it's just. I love the texture, so. And I have customers who love the texture, so that's why I grow it.

Karin Velez [00:09:03]:
And it does take longer because it's forming that tight head. It's not sort of a loose head. And it. It tends to, you know, really need those cooler conditions. And I actually got it planted late, but it's still just this past weekend I harvested it and it was just amazingly succulent. So that did the job. But where I would change this for next season would be I would space my beds out or my trellises out just a little bit more if I intend to continue putting the tomatoes in. In the same manner.

Karin Velez [00:09:36]:
Because even though the peas are shading the lettuces nicely, it's having a sort of detrimental effect with the tomatoes because those beds are so closely together. The. I anticipated that the tomatoes would at least get that, you know, good morning sun. And then it would also, you know, be blocked for a little bit by the peas for the afternoon. But, you know, those peas are going to be done soon and they're going to get cut down. And so that would give the full sun to those tomatoes. The tomatoes are fine. They're not as big and robust as I would hope they would be at this stage of the game, but they still look very healthy.

Karin Velez [00:10:15]:
So I have probably two more harvests. I've got one more harvest this week, and then I might eek one more harvest out of those sugar snap peas next week, and then they're going to be done for the season. So what I will do and all the lettuces have already been harvested, so those beds are empty with the exception of the tomatoes and the peas. So now I'll go back through and I will cut down those pea plants and I will leave those roots in the soil. This is going to fix all of that nitrogen. Remember, peas being legumes, they fix their own nitrogen. So they're pulling that atmospheric nitrogen in, and they are, the, the nodules in those roots are turning that atmospheric nitrogen into a form that the plant can use. If you cut the roots off of those plants, well, now you're leaving those nodules in the soil, and as they start to break down, you are feeding that nitrogen back into that soil.

Karin Velez [00:11:05]:
So that's going to benefit those tomatoes. And then, of course, by the time I pull those down, then the sun, they're going to have the full sun. The tomatoes will get the full sun. So they will, you know, start to thrive, I think, at that point. So I think it's a great pairing. It has worked fabulously well. I really like the way that this worked out. I just think that I would maybe space the trellises a little further apart so that the tomatoes would get more of that earth early sun or the more of that morning sun earlier in the season before the tomato, the peas get, you know, cut down.

Karin Velez [00:11:34]:
So, but all in all, absolutely something that I will do again with just maybe a small tweak here and there. The second in ground bed that I tried or new combination that I tried was doing my bok choy with the green onions like I normally do, but then also pairing it with spinach. So with all of these pairings, I am sticking with my concept of high, low, fast, slow. Right? So we're pairing the tall growing ones with the lower growing ones and the fast maturing varieties with the slower maturing ones. And that way nobody is competing and nobody's competing for nutrients or sunlight or water. And again, this is all experimental. And every season it's going to be a little bit different. Sometimes, you know, the weather conditions are going to be just right for one thing, but maybe the other thing doesn't like it.

Karin Velez [00:12:25]:
And so this is going to vary from season to season, but in general, you can kind of use that high, low, fast, slow rule to make some pairings in your garden and allow things to complement each other while taking up less space. The other option with this too is that you're also choking out the weeds, right? You're taking up all of that bed space. And so in combination with some mulch, you are also, you know, just choking out anything, there's no room for anything else to grow. Okay. So if you've ever grown bok choy before, you know, unless you are harvesting it as like a baby bok choy, where you just want the little ones, if you're letting up that get full sized, they're big. Like, they are big and heavy and very, very thick at the base. And I mean, we harvest some that were, you know, full £4 or more, and they have a very wide base to them, so they need a little bit of a room. They don't mind being next to each other, but they need a little bit of room to leaf out sort of in between those rows.

Karin Velez [00:13:28]:
I generally will plant green onions down the center between the rows of the bok choy. But I wanted to utilize that space just a little bit more this year. And so I experimented with doing a row of space spinach. So it eventually ended up being. Now this bed is what I call my barn bed. And so this is in a. It's a 24 foot long space that is about 15ft wide. It's up against the side of our barn.

Karin Velez [00:13:53]:
And I sort of broke this down into four individual beds with just little narrow walkways in between. You almost couldn't really tell that there was walkways. Everything was just straw mulch. So, I mean, the walkways were basically just wherever I stepped. So I started with bok choy, then a row of. Of green onions, and then another, you know, set of bok choy. And then I left a little bit more space than what I normally would just to be able to put in the spinach. And then did another bok choy and green onions and spinach.

Karin Velez [00:14:29]:
And I think I probably needed to space this, the bok choy and the spinach a little bit further apart than what I did because the bok choy grew tall fast enough that I think it shaded out the spinach. I also direct seeded the spinach. So the bok choy was put in as transplants, and so were the green onions. And then I direct sewed the spinach seeds in in their row. And I also think that I probably planted the spinach a little bit too closely together. So I had kind of a double whammy going there. I didn't thin out the spinach, and so it was kind of competing with itself for space. But then the bok choy got tall enough to where it was sort of shading the spinach a little bit more than I wanted to.

Karin Velez [00:15:21]:
I wanted that bok choy to be able to shade that spinach, because again, spinach is another one of those where it doesn't really love the heat and. And it will bolt fairly quickly when it gets too hot. And I was trying to see if I could prevent that. I think the spacing might have been okay if I hadn't planted the spinach so closely together. So will I do this one again next year? Probably. But I might, you know, space the spinach just a little bit further away from the bok choy and then either make sure that I go back and thin out that spinach ahead of time, which, let's be honest, I'm really bad about going back and doing or do the spinach as transplants, which I don't love, because in my experience, spinach just doesn't love being transplanted. And again, transplanting is more work. That also means more space for me starting my seeds.

Karin Velez [00:16:14]:
So the third option there, I think, is for me to just be a little bit more thoughtful about how I go through and plant that spinach if I'm direct sowing it. And then I think that this will work. I might also try to get the spinach in just a little bit earlier than what I did. I need to go back into my garden journal and see what date I planted the spinach versus when I transplanted the bok choy and the green onions and see if maybe I can push the envelope just a little bit with those soil temperatures and get the spinach in sooner so that it is larger by the time the bok choy gets taller and starts shading it. I think that will probably work better. So not a bad planting or not a bad pairing overall. Just something that probably also needs to be tweaked just a little bit in order to repeat it again next season.

Karin Velez [00:17:00]:
As I have become a loving rose bush mama, I am determined to make sure that my rose has lush foliage, vibrant blooms, and a strong root system. This means understanding the right fertilizer and proper feeding schedule. So what I've learned from heirloom roses is that we should not be feeding our first year rose plants with granulated fertilizer, only liquid. And if we're growing roses in containers like I am, we should only ever be using liquid fertilizers. This is all so that we don't scorch the roots of our rose plants. The timing of these feedings is also important. So during the active growing season, the spring and the summer, we should begin fertilizing when we see four to six inches of new growth and. And a leaflet with five to seven leaves. Again, use a liquid fertilizer for every four to six weeks for our first year roses.

Karin Velez [00:19:14]:
okay, so those were the two in ground beds. Now let's move on to the raised planters. These are all planter box direct planters with the exception of one that was actually a bed made out of my grandkids old sandbox frame. But they're all different dimensions too, so I will give you the details on those as we go. The reason I was initially a little cautious in the past with pushing the limits in these raised beds was mostly due to airflow reasons, but also nutrients. So we know when we are putting plants very closely together there is kind of this tendency for the humidity to get trapped in and around those plants, right? And that of course can sometimes lead to fungal diseases and so we want to be very conscientious about how much airflow we allow.

Karin Velez [00:20:04]:
The raised planters are all sort of grouped together in my kitchen garden, and the soil level in these raised planters is probably a good, I don't know, 3 inches, maybe some places as good as 4 inches below the lip of the beds. These beds are 17 inches tall. And so I was a little concerned about the airflow if the plants are too close together. Number one, the base of those plants is being kind of blocked by the upper lip of those raised beds, which, you know, if I were to add more soil or more compost in there, then that would help to take care of that a little bit. But also, number two, they're all kind of close together. And so I decided I needed to be very strategic, number one, about which plants I paired together. Remember, high, low, fast, slow. And then once I made that decision, I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of this worked out very, very well and I didn't have any fungal diseases because again I mentioned we had all of this rain in the spring.

Karin Velez [00:21:02]:
And so even though it was even more wet than what it normally would be in there, and the humidity was crazy high, I still did not see a bunch of foliar diseases. So that is good to know. The other thing that I'm concerned about, again I mentioned, was the nutrients. The, the limited volume of soil in a raised plant planter means that we have a limited number of nutrients or amount of nutrients available to those plants and that could be depleted if we are planting too intensively and we are not doing something to manage that soil fertility. So I was sure to make sure that I heavily amended with compost like we generally do. I do this in the fall and then maybe a little bit of a dusting on top in the spring just to kind of again add to that soil volume a little bit. And then the plan is to also feed the soil again with liquid amendments about halfway through the season and then maybe again in the fall to compensate and make sure that these plants all have plenty of nutrients available to them. They don't deplete that soil during the growing seasons.

Karin Velez [00:22:18]:
They can continue to throw thrive as we go through. Because once again, as I'm going to get into all of these beds, not only were part of an inter planting or an intercropping in the spring, but they also are getting a relay planting of something else that is actually a summer crop at this point. And some of them will continue to grow even at the same time that summer crop is happening. Okay, so let's dig into it. The first set of them was now I mentioned, I think at some point that I was doing an experiment with growing mint in some of these raised planters as a sort of permanent living mulch or, you know, a permanent companion to whatever happens to go in There. So this is my second season with this. And the first set of beds that I have that mint in was planted to collards in the spring and is now transitioning into cucumbers. So these are 2 foot by 6 foot long beds.

Karin Velez [00:23:24]:
And the mint was already in there. The I had planted that last season. It came up to fill the bed this season and I have been keeping it managed by keeping it trimmed back. So I did chocolate mint, thinking that the chocolate mint maybe isn't quite as aggressive as some of the other mints. Oh, boy, was I wrong. They have just been thriving in these raised beds, which is fine. It's what I wanted. But I knew I also had to be strategic about what I would plant in these beds if I'm going to use mint as a permanent sort of mulch.

Karin Velez [00:23:53]:
So I've made sure to keep it back. I'm harvesting it constantly. By the way, if you grow mint and you don't immediately have like a need for it, maybe you're not a fan of like drying it into tea. You just want it for fresh use and you don't know what to do with all of this mint. Chop it all up, let it dry, and then use it as a mulch. Throw it on top of your plants. I'm telling you, it helps with. And that just actually could be any aromatic herb or any of your plants.

Karin Velez [00:24:20]:
I mean, just literally chop it up. And now with mint, you want to make sure you really chop it up. So it's not rerooting in your planters, but just throw it in there and use it as a mulch. I'm throwing it around my rose bush. I'm throwing them in all my raised beds. It's. It makes an amazing mulch. It helps with the insects, I think, because it's such a strong smell and it smells fabulous when you're out there working in the plants.

Karin Velez [00:24:37]:
So anyway, that, that aside, keeping the mint, you know, cut back, I planted the collards and I'm trying to remember if I planted those from seed or if I transplanted those. I want to say I transplanted those because those are. They're pretty evenly spaced out. So I'm going to bet that I transplanted those into the mint and they have been doing fabulously well. I mean, those collards have grown and I have harvested week after week after week with those collards. They are still growing strong. And as long as I keep that mint under control and cut back, it doesn't seem to be impeding the growth of the collards at all. That planting is transitioning into cucumbers.

Karin Velez [00:25:23]:
So these beds run east to west, and so they get like the sun most of the day. And I planted the collards on the southern edge of those beds, and now I have cucumbers going in in the northern end of those beds. And so the idea is I'm also going to have a trellis that's behind there so the cucumbers can trellis up, and they continue to trellis down under the collards. And we'll see how that goes. So this is a little bit of an experiment that's ongoing to see, number one, how long the collards will continue to go, because I did plant, I think they're called. I think they're the Georgia Southern collards, and they're supposed to be good, you know, going through the heat and stuff. So I want to see how long I can continue to harvest these collard greens throughout the summer while that those cucumbers are growing now in the same size beds. I have also done this with kale.

Karin Velez [00:26:24]:
So there's two. So there's five beds where I did this with the collards. Now I've done the exact same thing with kale. The mint was already there. The kale got transplanted in. It is on the south end of the bed. And then the cucumbers are coming up in the north end of the bed, and they're going to go ahead and climb up the trellis. And I have.

Karin Velez [00:26:42]:
I have a little bit more faith in the kale at this point versus the collards only because the way that we harvest our kale, and this is important to know because this is going to go along with one of the other pairings that we did, is I harvest the large outer leaves from the base of the plant and leave the younger leaves in the center. What happens is that kale continues to grow up. And so as you're harvesting the large outer leaves, it starts to look like a palm tree. You've got this nice thick stalk that looks like a tree trunk, and you have the new growth coming out the top. And so that leaves space around the base of that kale for those cucumbers to kind of sprawl out across the mint over top of the mint, underneath the kale, in addition to going up those trellises. So again, this is another ongoing experiment in those same size beds, 2 foot by 6 foot, and we'll see how that goes. The other three beds of the same size also started with mint, were interplanted with lettuce head, lettuce and green onions. And so the head lettuces were, you know, done on both the north side and the south side of the bed.

Karin Velez [00:27:50]:
They took up the whole bed. The green onions were right down the center. I will say on this one, the mint was a little bit of an impedance to the growth of the green onions. If I didn't keep up on the mint, if. If I let that mint get any remotely tall, it will kind of choke out those green onions. It didn't completely kill them off. And I had. Once I got the.

Karin Velez [00:28:16]:
The mint cut back again, they took off, you know, growing just fine. And they did seem to help the. The mint did seem to help keep the insects away from the lettuces. Now, full disclosure, I absolutely was still using insect knitting on all of these crops. Okay? So, you know, I'm. I'm not skipping that. But, you know, there's always insects that get in underneath. Especially if you have something really tall like kale or collards that are pushing the netting up and you don't get out there and secure it back down again properly.

Karin Velez [00:28:47]:
And there's always insects that are going to get in there. I have had no issues with insects in the collards or the kale and the lettuce. I didn't have anything. The only thing that I had in the lettuces was there were some pill bugs down in there. Those roly polis that love that straw mulch, and they like to get down underneath there, and once they're done eating their way through the. The compost, they sort of make their way towards the lettuces. The one problem that I did have was more due to the excessive weather or the excessive rain that we have had and the amount of moisture that was sort of trapped down in and around the straw mulch, which I had a little too close to the base of those plants. So until I realized what was going on, there was some rot going on down in there because the bottom of that lettuce was just constantly wet.

Karin Velez [00:29:34]:
So once I pulled the mulch away, that. That solved that issue. But again, those beds, now the lettuce is all out of there. The green onions are done and out of there. So the only thing that's in there at this point is the mint and the beginning of those cucumbers. I will say with these 10 beds, the collards, the kale, and the lettuce, with the mint going into the cucumbers, I started the cucumbers by direct sowing them in those beds. I believe that I would be better off starting these from seeds separately and transplanting them into these beds, mainly because of the mint. I'm still.

Karin Velez [00:30:17]:
I'm still convinced that the mint is actually a good thing. It really does seem to be helping. I. I have barely any weed pressure in there, and there's not a ton of mulch because the mint kind of took up that space. So there's not a ton of straw in any of those beds, with the exception of the lettuce beds that, interestingly enough, the mint hadn't come back as strong yet when I planted those. And there is some, you know, some straw in around the collards and the kale, but not nearly as much as you would think. The mint is doing its job. But I think the.

Karin Velez [00:30:46]:
The mint can be aggressive, obviously, and if you're not real good at keeping up on keeping it trimmed back, it can very easily choke some things out. I also had some deer come in and sort of nose, you know, the. The insect nutting out of the way and get in there and munch on a couple of the cucumber plants. And I think if they had been a little bit bigger, that would have been less of an issue. So I'm replanting some of them because they did either got predated on or they just didn't do as well because they didn't get enough sun or there wasn't enough room or whatever, I think. So. I think in this planting, I will probably do this again, depending on how those cucumbers do later on in the season. But I think the next time I may transplant those cucumber plants in there rather than direct sowing them into the beds.

Karin Velez [00:31:38]:
I usually prefer the direct sew method just because I feel like the cucumbers get a better start. They are more adapted to their environment more quickly, and cucumbers don't love being transplanted. You can transplant them, but they just seem to do better and be more robust for me in my climate, in my environment by direct sewing. So that's why I direct sewed them. I think next time, though, if I were to do them into the mint like this, I would absolutely do them ahead of time and then just transplant plant them.

Karin Velez [00:33:22]:
So the next raised bed pairing that I experimented this year has absolutely knocked it out of the park. This has been way better than I ever could have anticipated. And it's still going, it's still going to be an experiment. And this was beets and kale into cucumbers. So I have two, I have three beds of this. Two of them are five foot by five foot.

Karin Velez [00:33:48]:
So one of them is a planter box direct bed. The other one is that, you know, leftover sandbox configuration from my grandkids. And then one of them is a three foot by four foot bed. And I started by direct sewing the beets as soon as the soil was warm enough and got them in their little rows within that bed, allowed the beets to come up and get themselves established. And then I transplanted kale plants in between those little rows. The idea being like we just talked about with kale, as it's growing taller, I could be harvesting out from underneath. That would still give the beets plenty of space to be able to grow and get leafy and big without impeding the growth, without cutting off, you know, the, the light that it was supposed to get. And then I could, you know, harvest the beets from out in between that kale and allow that kale to continue to grow.

Karin Velez [00:34:42]:
Because just like in those other 10 beds, this bed is also transitioning into cucumbers. So I have cucumbers that have been planted again, directly sewn from seed on the north side of those three beds. And there will be a trellis that goes up there. So the cucumbers should be able to climb up that trellis and then also spread themselves out across that bed in and underneath the kale. And so the hope here is that the kale can continue to grow without being impeded by the cucumbers, and that maybe the cucumbers will help to cover that soil where the kale is. Even though there's straw down there, I think that extra layer might help to keep that soil a little bit cooler in the summertime and allow that kale to continue to grow. So we'll see how this works. But so far, the kale with the beets has worked out phenomenally well.

Karin Velez [00:35:39]:
I have harvested so much kale out of these beds, it's still coming on. I have kale coming out my ears. The beets have done phenomenally well. We all know, you know, beets can be a little tricky sometimes, because unless you're buying a monogerm seed, beets have three plant embryos per seed cluster. So if you're not real careful about how you plant those beets and how you space out those seeds, you're going to end up with a ton of beets in a row. Now, if you have the wherewithal to go back and thin those beets out, then you can solve that problem. If you don't like me because I have too many things going on and I know what I've gotten myself into, you don't go back and you thin your beets. You thin your beets as baby beets.

Karin Velez [00:36:23]:
And so as those beets start to mature, I will go through and I will pull them as they get large enough to use and allow the remaining ones to stay in the ground and continue to grow. Now, I try to be conscientious about how I'm spacing those out when I plant, but sometimes they get a little crowded. Hasn't mattered. This year, those beads have all done phenomenally well, with the exception of the deer coming through and once again putting their noses up underneath the insect netting and literally not just eating the tops off of the beets, but yanking them out and dropping them on the ground outside of the bed when they were done with the greens and just leaving the roots there. So I had a bunch of little baby beets that I got to eat for myself because nobody else likes the beets. And other than that, the beets have done really, really well. And the kale is continuing to do phenomenally well. So this is absolutely a pairing that I will do from here on out.

Karin Velez [00:37:17]:
Whether or not the cucumbers work out remains to Be seen. I'll give you guys an update probably, you know, towards the end of the summer about how well that is working, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I am, I am cautiously optimistic that that is going to work very well. Now, one that didn't quite work as well as I would hope, but that I will repeat with some tweaking is in two more beds in the kitchen garden. Again, these are 4 foot by 5 foot. And this was kohlrabi with beets. This one didn't work quite as well, but it has redeemed itself. So I think I underestimated how quickly the kohlrabi was going to grow.

Karin Velez [00:38:00]:
So just like the kale with the beets, I planted the beet seeds first and allowed them to come up and be established. And I kind of planted them in little rows in that 4x5 bed and then on the outer rows and then in between the inner rows. I transplanted the kohlrabi. Well, if you've ever grown kohlrabi, you know, it gets kind of leafy on the top. If you're not familiar with what kohlrabi is, it's in the cabbage family. It flowers forms an above ground sort of bulb that has these giant leaves that come up from it. You'll have to go and look at a picture. A picture.

Karin Velez [00:38:39]:
What was the name of that cartoon character, Mike from Monsters Inc. The little green dude. Yeah. That reminds me of kohlrabi with some eyeballs. But go look it up and you'll see it's a very interesting looking vegetable. They're fabulous. It tastes great, but they get really big and leafy and those, those leaves get kind of tall. I underestimated how quickly that kohlrabi was going to grow with those beets.

Karin Velez [00:39:06]:
And by the time it was time to harvest the kohlrabi. Now kohlrabi is kind of is a one and done and the spacing is a little bit more specific than, you know, say the beets would be so very easy to know exactly how many I was going to harvest. They all pretty much get harvested at once, maybe over the course of two weeks or two, harvest if you have some smaller ones that need to catch up. But I harvested all of mine all at once. And what I found was by the time the kohlrabi was ready to come out of that bed, the beets had been stunted. The beets, the greens weren't nearly as big as the beets in the other beds right next to these that were with the kale I mean, like, to the point where I don't even think they had really started to form their. Their roots yet versus the ones in the next bed that were clearly already forming their roots as I started to harvest the kale. But now the kohlrabi has been out for several weeks and those beets have bounced back and they are thriving and they are forming their roots with no problem.

Karin Velez [00:40:05]:
So I think what I would do would be to, I don't know, I might plant the. See if I can plant the beets earlier, or I may just not plant the kohlrabi on the outside edges of the beets. And that way there would be more sun available to those beets that were sort of in the center. So this would cut down on the amount of kohlrabi that I would be able to grow in that same space, but the beets would do better. Or I could wait until the beets get a little bit older and a little bit more established before I plant the kohlrabi. And so that might work just as well. But the beets don't seem to be any worse for the wear at this stage of the game. In fact, now it has made it to where I sort of have a succession of beets.

Karin Velez [00:40:52]:
So all of the beets that are planted with the kale are all actively being harvested right now, and I'll harvest those over several weeks as they get larger and larger. Meanwhile, these guys over here are kind of playing catch up, and so they'll be ready to harvest by the time I finally harvest the beets out of those other three bets. So in that way, that delayed maturity is actually helping get me a better succession. And just like with all of these other beds, the kohlrabi bed is also or kohlrabi and beet bed is also getting cucumbers. Now, the difference with this is those cucumbers are going to have those entire beds to themselves because the kohlrabi is already out. The beets will eventually all be out as well. And those cucumbers are coming up now, so they will have the entire bed to themselves and for the entire summer. So I'll be interested to see what the yield difference will be in the beds where the cucumbers have the entire bed to themselves and the beds where they have to share the space with the kale or the collards.

Karin Velez [00:41:54]:
So I'm definitely going to be taking notes in my garden journal and I will be reporting back to you guys probably closer towards the summer, end of the summer. And then there's one, one sort of honorable mention that is being done in a couple of older, you know, wooden beds that definitely need to be replaced because they're falling apart at this point. They are like 3 foot by 4 foot. And there are two of these beds. And I did green beans with dill. Now, these beds are along one side of my driveway. So what I did was I direct sewed the dill and in sort of a U shape, so along three sides of those beds and left the front side open for access. And then I planted in the middle bush green beans.

Karin Velez [00:42:48]:
And I was hoping that the dill would help with some of the insect predation, because in addition to having to use the insect netting to cover to protect from the deer and from the bunny rabbits, the grasshoppers love to eat the leaves of our green beans. And a lot of the time it will absolutely affect the yield. And like I said, even if you put those green. The. The insect netting over top of those beans, at some point, they're pushing up on that netting and there are access points for those insects to get in. So unless I were to do hoops over the top of them and then stake it all down, which I don't have enough hoops and stuff for all these different beds to be able to do that, the only other option was to maybe find something that I could interplant. Let me tell you, I have been harvesting that dill. It's.

Karin Velez [00:43:37]:
It's gotten nice and big. I have taken a couple of harvests off of it. It's bouncing back and growing some more, which has been fabulous. It smells amazing. And the green beans are super healthy. There hasn't been any insect predation on any of them. They're all flowering and loaded with itty bitty, tiny little beans right now. So I'm hoping by next week I will actually get my first green bean harvest out of all of these little bush beans.

Karin Velez [00:44:01]:
And so is that one that I think worked? Yeah, absolutely. Will I do it again? Yeah, I probably will. And if not with dill, then I might do it with another very strong scented herb that would do sort of the same thing. The interesting thing is I haven't had anything going after the dill either. I would have assumed that I would have seen black swallowtail caterpillars eating on it, because that's one of their favorite things. And I haven't seen any of that, not on my dill or on my parsley, which happens to be around my shar, one of my beds of shard too. So I Don't know what's going on with the insects this year, but I'm not gonna complain. I can.

Karin Velez [00:44:38]:
You know, this could be causation. It could be correlation, right? We never know unless we do these things over and over again. And then we go look and do a controlled trial and all these kinds of things. We're never going to know for sure if what we're doing to keep insects away is working because of what we're doing or if there was some other reason for this to happen. It could very well be there was just so much rain that the insects haven't been able to do what they normally do. And once Mother Nature turns the faucet off, we might be inundated. Who knows? But if it seems like it works, then I'm gonna do it again, regardless of whether or not I have actual definitive proof. You know, if it.

Karin Velez [00:45:15]:
If it doesn't, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? But it also encourages me to continue trying new combinations. So I hope this episode gave you the inspiration to try new combinations in your garden beds. And you can do this in the fall garden, too, so you know, you don't have to wait until next spring to maybe give some of these combinations a try. You can do this. For fall is. Now is the time to start planning for a fall garden. Just remember to pair high, low, fast, slow, right? When you think about the mature seed size of the plant and how long it's going to be in that garden bed during the season. And don't be afraid to thin some plants out if you need to, to benefit the other ones if you see some stunted growth.

Karin Velez [00:46:00]:
Experimentation always leads to education, whether it's a full success, a moderate one, or even a total failure, Right? That is how we get better. Until next time, my gardening friends. Keep on cultivating that dream garden, and we'll talk again soon.