In this video we're going to talk about interplanting a raised bed to get more
out of the same space.
Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening where it's my goal to help you grow
greener thumb. Let's talk about interplanting. It's a fantastic technique,
especially if you're in a small space urban garden like myself,
you're growing in a raised bed, to get more out of less, right?
We have one 38 inch diameter, 30 inch tall round bed here,
one of my favorite beds in the garden actually.
And it's growing onions right now. What do we know about onions?
We know that they are a long season crop. It takes a long time to grow,
shallow root system. They grow nice and thin,
they don't take up a lot of horizontal space and so there's a lot of space in
between these onions. What that means is while these onions are young,
I can throw in another crop and we can get even more out of it.
So that's what we're doing in this video. Before we get into it,
cultivate that Like button for 20 years of Epic onion harvest and we'll get into
the video.
So we have our onions here and what you'll notice right away is they're really
well spaced for onions. I did a bit of a triangular style spacing,
maybe four to five, maybe six inches apart. But again, like I said early on,
look what we do.
We'll just make little bisections of these types of lines here and we can cram
in some extra radishes.
And that's what I'm going to be putting in from my little radish toolbox right
here. We'll talk about some of the varieties,
but you can do this with a lot of different crops. It's not just onions,
it's not just this type of setup. For example,
when you're growing and interplanting tomatoes,
what you can do is once the tomatoes grow up,
you can prune off some of the lower growth and then you can grow an understory
plant in your tomato beds. So there's a lot of different ways to interplant,
but right now I'm just going to pepper in a few radishes.
No need to go insane here.
I don't need a massive crop of them,
but I do want to just get you know,
a little bit of extra production out of this bed.
The radishes I've chosen are Black Spanish radishes,
really cool unique one. And really that's all there is to it guys.
Just plant in just like this.
And at the end of the video I'm going to give you a little bonus interplanting
tip. So stay tuned.
Okay. As we water in our new radish crop that's coming in,
the extra intercropping tips or interplanting tips.
So the first thing to think about is tall and small.
So let's say you have a bed of corn, right?
Corn is a long season crop and it's also a pretty tall plant,
shallow roots.
So what you want to think about there is potentially interplanting with
something that's a fast growing crop that grows low to ground.
Because not only are you going to turn that over and you're going to get that
out of there before the corn comes mature and really needs to use all of the
nutrition in that bed, but you're also going to protect the soil.
And so the soil is going to stay nice and moist.
You have a living mulch basically over the top of it.
It's really going to help your corn stay nice and moist.
You're not going to have these crazy shocks to the root system.
It's a really good way to think about it. Then also think season to season,
right. So let's imagine I have some tomatoes in here like I mentioned before.
Tomatoes is another good, tall and small. But for example,
if we're moving in from summer into a fall,
what you can do is as your tomatoes,
by that point they're going to be nice and bare on the bottom and there's a lot
of room on the bare soil below.
What you can do is then plant in and start your fall crops before your tomatoes
are out of the ground.
And so you're getting this nice turnover where there's no time left where the
soil is bare and you're just squeezing the most out of your garden,
both in terms of space and in terms of time.
So simple tip for you guys today. Raised bed urban gardening in small spaces.
If you like this,
cultivate that Like button and you will get 20 years of Epic onion harvest.
And until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.