Companion Planting in Your Vegetable Patch

These are what’s called the symbiotic relationships in the vegetable kingdom ie plants when planted in close proximity to each other ‘help’ or benefit each other and reduce your requirement to resort to sprays to control disease and insects.

Plants that are good companions include :

• asparagus with tomato, basil and parsley
• celery with onions, tomatoes and nasturtiums
• eggplant with beans and marigold
• pumpkins with corn and marigold

Crop rotation

Rotating your crops would ensure that you don’t deplete your soil of any one particular nutrient and also prevents the deadly buildup of diseases in the soil that plague a particular group of vegetables.
It takes a bit of planning and practice to get crop rotation right – generally the rule of thumb is to break up the vegetables you plan to plant into their basic family groups ie cucurbits, mescluns,
brassicas, legumes, alliums, crucifers, solanaceae (potatoes) and your perennial vegetables which come back year after year ie asparagus. The aim is to rotate your crops so that the same family group returns to the same spot every 3-4 years – so it makes sense to have 4 vegetable plots to work around.

Planting out in blocks

This means you ‘try’ to plant out your vegetables so that you avoid a feast or famine type situation (where you’re harvesting tonnes of beans all at once for example). If you plant out in blocks that will ensure that you can harvest what you need with the minimum wastage. Unless you have obliging meighbours who will take your extra heads of lettuce, there’s no point having 10 all ready for harvest at the same time! The only vegetable I’ve found hard to manage is the zucchini – they just seem to grow as you look at them! Thankfully the one plant seems to suffice for my family of 4 and even then usually we have a zucchini week where everything and anything seems to have zucchini as some ingredient or other.

Watering your vegetable garden

I water my vegetables with rain water. That’s because I have a rain barrel that collects the runoff from rain on my backyard pergola roof. You need consistent watering for good results in vegetables. Water the soil around the vegetables NOT the vegetables or you risk having fungus/mildew problems. You may want to consider using a soaker hose if your vegetable garden is very large to make watering easier.

Starting your very own vegetable garden

It’s without saying that there’s nothing like picking your very own vegetables from your garden – picking a salad for dinner can be an enjoyable task and it’s also gratifying to know that you’ve grown your own produce to eat (free from pesticides and sprays). It’s a myth that you need a huge plot of land to start your very own vegetable garden. That’s only necessary if you are planning to feed your whole family solely with your own vegetable produce. There’s nothing to stop you from just having a small herb garden in containers or even just planting out salad greens in flower pots or window boxes can be just as satisfying.

Planning your Vegetable Garden

To ensure success, you need to plan your vegetable garden and work out how much time you have to maintain it. Vegetable gardening is pleasurable but it is also time consuming because most vegetables are gross feeders and require a fair bit of care to ensure that you get a good crop and one that is worth eating. Whilst the traditional thinking for vegetable garden design was to have long orderly rows of vegetables, you can opt to do square foot gardening (which is a good alternative and more space effective).

Some traditionalists feel that you have to work the soil ie dig in lots of compost and manure into existing ground to prepare the plot. I’ve found the no-dig alternative even better – definitely a worthwhile endeavor for those with bad backs or for elderly gardeners who prefer not to have to work the soil too hard to enjoy a bountiful harvest. Raising the plot also ensures better drainage and the soil also tends to stay warmer in the colder climates.

You don’t have to dedicate one whole plot solely to vegetables alone – the potager garden is a gardening style which mixes up flowers, herbs and vegetables together in varied shapes and designs to create an overall aesthetically pleasant garden which is both beautiful to look at and productive to boot.

Wherever you decide to put your vegetable garden, you have to pick a sunny spot – that’s because the bulk of the vegetables that you grow will need at least 6 hours of sunlight daily to thrive. For some it could be a problem if there are overhanging trees in certain spots so the choice for the plot would be pretty obvious. For other gardeners who have lots of sunny spots in their garden, then the choices could be greater. If at all possible, site it as close to the house as possible. I tend to like to pick my garden salad in the evening just before I get dinner ready, which means it’s nothing for me to duck out and walk just a few steps and harvest, this would be a tad harder if it my vegetable plot was somewhere down the back of the yard where I’d need a torch to find the salad greens. Siting the vegetable near the house also means that watering chores and fertilizing are easier to perform and I’m less likely to forget them.

For myself, I want to achieve semi-sustainability. I don’t think I can survive without my luxuries and I’m not sure I have the time and patience to bake everything, grow everything etc. I do harvest rain water. I re-use the rinse water from my washing machine to water the garden and I use low phosphorus detergents so that I can do this. I have contemplated using a composting toilet and to purchase an electric bicycle for those trips that are just too long to walk and too short to justify using a car (I live in a hilly area and I can peddle up some but the steeper ones I have to get off my bike to push). I think for me I just want to be able to live as organically as I possibly can and to leave this world with as little rubbish (landfill) as is possible and to leave a legacy of being ‘a gardener who tried’.