Courtesy Karen Blakeman / Flickr
As the season ’s early crops wind down , the urban farmer––limited , as always , by space––might be eager to tear those plants out and get more fresh food grow . But as you focalize on the crop that will feed your family , it ’s important to retrieve the garden has need , too . When those needs are met , the garden can be extremely vigorous ; when neglected , however , it can become overproduction with pestilence , disease , and nutrient deficiencies that ultimately take to unproductive industrial plant or harvest failure .
Below are six tips for preserve your garden good for you and in production throughout the grow season . Keep them in mind as the season chugs along , and look forward to a healthy , fruitful class .
1. Provide Nutrient Balance
All good gardening centers on fertility . Before taking one harvest out of output and put another in , consider the fertility and richness of the grunge and the want of the crop you wish to plant . For instance , do n’t trace one heavy feeder — bread , maize , cucumbers , et cetera — with another nutrient - hungry harvest . Instead , engraft something that will fix a nutrient back into the soil the previous plant life used up .
Part of providing balance signify you must be observant . If the proceedings harvest did poorly , the second harvest is not likely to fly high . In this case , or if you ca n’t help but plant back - to - back heavy affluent , consider desegregate a fiddling matured compost into the grime before replant .
2. Use Cover Crops
breed crops add food to the dirt and reduce weed insistency . If you have the outer space and you dread your soil fertility may be low , conceive about sowing a cover harvest either between planting or under existing crops . Buckwheat makes for a fast summer screening crop , proficient at save weeds down and bestow morning star . Sweet clover and soybeans are other common cover craw that do a fantastical job of ready atomic number 7 .
Sow the cover crop thickly in flawlessly cultivated dirt and allow it to block out weeds until you ’re quick to plant . crop the duncish covering fire crop into the soil before it decease to seed , then let the soil stand the green matter . start to replant two or more weeks later , when the unripened matter is full incorporated . If you need to replant earlier , remove the green subject from the garden , work the soil and replant .
3. Rotate Crop Families
Because the pest are often draw in to crop in the same family and nutrient needs can overlap , deflect planting crops of the same kinsfolk in the same place . For example , do n’t plant cucumber where you once had melons , as they ’re both cucurbits .
In intensive gardening situations , this case of thoughtful implementation has been experience to drastically improve the productivity of a garden while keeping pests down .
4. Succession Plant Crops
sequence planting is an effective way to make the most out of a little place . you may either sow the same craw over the course of instruction of several week or inseminate fellow crops alongside one . Crops like clams , for example , can be sown thickly in rows and harvested as “ cut lettuce ” two or three time . After the last cutting , the plants can be thinned to one plant per substructure and allowed to point up . With this method you could harvest two unlike character of crop — head dough and cut lettuce — from the same space . you could also sow the lettuce over the class of several weeks and plant radishes or Daucus carota sativa in between the lettuce row as comrade plants .
5. Interplant Crops
Interplanting is the recitation of plant more than one craw in a given country , and it ’s a great mode of avoiding the replanting dilemma altogether . Typically the crops pick out gain the other crops in some way — often touch to as associate works .
Most famously , we see this in the “ Three Sisters ” compounding , where corn is interplanted with perch attic ( in the row , once corn is up ) and pumpkins or wintertime squash ( between the rows after beans ) . The corn , bean and crush all add and utilize different nutrients , and none occupy the same level of the garden while they grow .
Although interplanting command some provision , no space is wasted and all the crops benefit when execute well .
6. Remove Dead Plant Matter
Once a crop has fully senesced and you ’re ready to replant , move out the dead flora matter to your compost . A garden can break down plant stuff or it can grow plant life , but doing both simultaneously can be taxing . Some crops fail more pronto if the soil is work to digest immature issue while trying to acquire . you’re able to set lolly the right way into a hole left by a green Allium cepa , for example , but most effectively if the green onion leaves the garden entirely .
