June - and Companion planting

So....for me, the art of urban gardening is doing a lot with a little space.    Or rather, cramming in lots, and lots and lots of vegetables (often too many, really) into my backyard.  (and my front yard). There's a part of me that loves the engineering challenge of how to squeeze everything in, and get a full season's harvest out of a very small plot.  One way to "double up" your space is to think seasonally - many plants that love the cold can share space with warmer-weather plants.  Here are some of my tips n' hints for packin' it in in the transition-season of June.   (PS: check out the June 1 post to see how each of these plots looked when I started them in May - its pretty cool how lush they look now compared).                                               

Spinach, with eggplant and onions around the side.

  

  1. Plant little, early fast plants around plants that get big later.

For example...Spinach grows fast and loves cool weather.   So I planted a whole bunch of them in a square, leaving an empty spot in the middle for an eggplant.   Since eggplants need warm weather, hopefully the spinaches will be ready to eat - and I can harvest them and leave the 2'-3' square the eggplant will take up in late July.

2. Plant "hot" and "cool"  things together.

Ideally, peas grow up fast and then are done when it gets hot.
I stuck a cayenne pepper in front of them to use the whiskey barrel when it gets done.
Well, now the peas are just popping out, which is awesome....and the pepper, well...is kind of small right now.  Can you see it in front there? .the pepper might not love sharing its dirt with these now-ginormous plants.   I'll let you know how it goes as the season wears on.
3. Fast-and-cool later-bloomers:  The row of radishes I planted in April is just about ready to pull out the cucumber bed...just in time to put in tiny little baby cucumber plants.

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Can you see the cucumbers in front?

Here's a close-up.  Still pretty small.

 



4. Poorly-planned insights...
Well, here I just threw in some carrots between the cabbages.....which will probably double in size before the carrots are ready.    (Can you see them, the little green things between the cabbages?)

 5. Peas, onions, lettuce, tomatoes and bok choi. (Check out the June 1 picture where I have rocks as placeholders for the tomatoes).

Here's one that seems to be working pretty well.   I started with peas by the fence in April, and onions all around the border.  The plan was to plant small things around the tomatoes that could be harvested before the tomatoes take over in July.  I got some marigolds and lettuce seedlings from Rachel in May put them in, and added the tomatoes in late May.   And of course, because I couldn't resist, I threw in some bok choi between the tomatoes a few weeks ago.   These tomatoes will eventually grow big enough to shade out almost this entire bed.   But now the lettuce is ready to harvest, the bok choi can be pulled almost whenever we want (to eat at baby size), and the onions will get pulled in mid July, and the peas will stay on the fence at least until the tomatoes get big.  

Although there are some downsides to all this intensive planting (like the fact that some plants have to fight for their fair share of sun, water or nutrients), I try to water well and keep everything well-fed, adding compost every time I plant something new to make up for how close everything is.    This bed was a lot of fun to plan, and unlike the eternally-late peas stuck with the the cayenne, one late plant won't make me sacrifice space for another.