As the snow gathers on the vegetable patch, the gardener can rest easy — up to a point.
Mother Nature is doing a lot of the work. The snow will slowly leach moisture into the tilled patch and, in the process, infuse it with nutrients from any top dressing. But even though the sweaty part of the gardener’s job is over, for now, the cerebral work is just beginning. Winter is the time to plan.
As you pore over the garden catalogs arriving in the mail every day, consider your upcoming order from a holistic perspective. Just because big farms adopt a monoculture approach — to make harvesting easier, among other reasons — doesn’t mean that approach is the right one for the backyard gardener.
Companion planting is well suited to the backyard. Winter is the appropriate time to choose those companions and visualize the summer vegetable garden as more than the sum of its parts.
Intercropping existed long before there was a Green movement or an Earth Day. There’s a good reason why: it’s practical, especially on the small scale. Long before Europeans settled in the New World, American Indian planters recognized the synergy of the Three Sisters: corn, squash and pole beans, planted together. Those siblings had a mutually beneficial relationship, allowing each to grow stronger than if planted in isolation.
Chemistry
Just as chemistry figures in romantic matches, chemistry is a major factor in matchmaking options for the vegetable patch. For example, heavy feeding veggies that deplete the soil of nitrogen are well paired with nitrogen fixers like peas and beans, whose roots carry nitrogen-generating bacteria.
Architecture
Architectural factors play a role, too. Deep-rooted and shallow-rooted vegetables often pair well, while plants prone to wilt, like lettuce and cucumbers, often do better in the company of taller, shade-producing plants. The shape of certain plants, like those with deeply cupped flowers (members of the squash family, for example) can attract beneficial insects to neighboring plants: pollinating bees, as well as wasp species that devour plant-ravaging bugs.
Aromatics
In some pairings, the benefits are one-sided, but no less valuable to the overall garden. Aromatics like dill and marigolds protect vegetables prone to damage by certain insects. This gardener’s vegetable patch relies heavily on aromatics to fend off legions of marauding deer, which seem to find the lovely scent of basil and dill offensive. Such herbs, planted directly inside the patch, are all annuals (for a Zone 5 climate). But some perennials with deer-discouraging scents also perform a service, just by standing in close proximity to the patch. Deer steer a wide berth around chaste bushes, Nepalese caryopteris and butterfly bushes, for example.
Likely Love Matches
green beans and potatoes corn and pumpkins melons and nasturtiums basil and peppers radishes and lettuce
Sources:
www.gardening.cornell.edu/factsheets/ecogardening/complant.html
www.unce.unr.edu/resources/horticulture/growyourown/files/pdf/GrowYourOwn14.pdf
www.ag.ndsu.edu/hort/info/vegetables/companion.htm