- Hello, and a very warm welcome back to the garden.
Now, I find it really easy to fill up the garden,
and by about June, July time I'm thinking
I haven't got enough space to fit in
all of the other seedlings that I'm growing.
But that isn't true.
In this video,
I'm gonna show you some really clever ways
that you can fit in more plants into the same growing space
so you can get more food.
In front of me here I've got some potatoes.
Now, this year I'm growing
a lot less potatoes in raised beds.
Usually I have two big raised beds,
like the ones behind me, full of potatoes,
but there's a reason why I'm doing this.
The thing about potatoes is that they're bulky plants.
They're pretty cheap,
but they're worth growing because they taste so good.
And the issue is that they take up a lot of space
when you're trying to grow all of the other main crops.
So they're occupying space
from kind of March until July, August time.
So a great workaround is to actually
grow potatoes in containers,
and then when you need some space,
for example here undercover,
I can then take these containers out,
place these along the fence, for example,
and then I've got prime growing space in my raised beds,
and I'm also growing potatoes as well.
By moving your potatoes
out of raised beds and into containers,
you suddenly find yourself
with loads of extra growing space,
premium growing space where you can put in
more of those high value crops,
for example, your broad beans or your peas.
Another crop that takes up
a lot of raised bed space are your squash plants.
They just sprawl all over,
and you're missing out.
So there's a couple of things you can do.
The first thing is to plant them
at the edges of raised beds
so they can go onto the pathway.
If you don't want that,
you might actually want to consider
growing them in your compost bins.
Any compost bin that you've set aside
to break down over the rest of the year
is a great place to grow some squash plants
to utilize that space.
My favorite way to fit in more crops in the garden
is to really play along with interplanting.
If you think about it,
every vegetable grows differently.
Some of them will grow tall,
some will be pretty short.
Some will be kind of narrow.
Others will be kind of wide and low growing.
Some will have deep roots.
Others will have pretty shallow roots.
And you can use all of these to your advantage.
So if you're looking at, say,
a single space, you can think, "Okay.
If I've got something that's quite tall,
for example those onions in front of me,
maybe I could grow something that grows a bit shorter
and spreads along the ground.
Hence why I've interplanted radish.
You can see, actually,
above the radish and onions there, are just onions.
So you can really make sense of the underused space.
I'm about to transplant a load more radish there.
Another way of doing might actually be growing lettuce,
and in this way you're utilizing both the vertical
but also the horizontal.
If you're new to interplanting,
one of the best things
you can start with are with your salads.
Here you can probably see that there's radish.
The ones up here I'm actually gonna let grow
so I can harvest the flowers and also the radish pods.
But amongst here I've also got some other things growing.
For example, I've got some lettuce,
and I've also planted some chicory.
And the great thing about interplanting
is it's a form of polyculture.
You're growing lots of different things together,
and that actually helps prevent pests,
because it makes it harder for pests
to attack a particular crop
because there were other different crops around.
So it helps you deal with pest issues a lot better.
In the video description,
there'll be some more resources about interplanting
so you can read up and find out more and get some ideas.
What I do wanna say,
and it's perhaps the most important tip regarding it,
is the best way to find out
and learn interplanting is to experiment.
This section of this raised bed here
is my spare seedling section.
Any seedlings that I have leftover,
I use this as a way to practice interplanting.
So one of the things here, I've got a load,
a little clump here of peas that I'm just putting in.
And I'm growing these around some lettuce and some onions.
And I'm trying to see how these work alongside one another,
both in terms of space,
because that can then give me ideas that influence the way
that I plant other things in the future.
For example, the onions and radish interplanting
was done out of experimentation,
and I found it to be really effective.
Related to interplanting is something called underplanting.
So when you have something that is particularly tall,
for example sweet corn,
or I've got these tomato seedlings,
which are about to go out, they just get on with life.
And you've got this big patch of bare earth underneath,
and one of the best ways to prevent things like evaporation
and to improve the soil health
is to grow as many living things there as possible.
So my idea is when these tomatoes are being transplanted,
I'll have all of these basil,
and also these beetroot seedlings,
which I will plant underneath the tomato plants
to make up all of that space.
Because inside undercover,
especially in a climate here like Wales,
that is the most precious growing space we have.
And it's a shame not to make the most of it.
There are some cases
where intercropping might not make sense.
These Swiss chard are gonna grow
into big things pretty quickly,
but there is something else that you can do.
And it's so fun.
It's called gap plugging.
It's plugging in gaps with seedlings.
This is something you can do with spare seedlings.
There's always going to be places
where there's a potential to grow more plants.
One of my favorite is in the corner of raised beds
like I have here.
You can grow something that then kinda sprools overthe edge.
So even though there's other crops,
you can fit in something else.
Now, for me, I've got a load of marigolds here,
and that's exactly what I'm gonna plant in this corner here.
And then other things you can grow as well, your herbs.
I've got some coriander. This is confetti coriander.
And these just fit in so nicely.
If you're looking for more of perhaps a vegetable crop,
then something you may want to consider
are dwarf French beans.
Get a load of dwarf French beans going.
And then I promise you, if you go around your garden,
you'll find some great spots just to stick in a plant or two
and you can get extra harvests.
Gap plugging is a great way to fit in more seedlings
and to have more of a natural,
organic feel around the garden.
And what you want to do to do it effectively
is to have a production line of seedlings.
So every couple of weeks start off some new things.
I've got some dwarf peas.
Here are some to dwarf French beans,
and also some radish that I'll always have ready,
if needed, to plug in some gaps.
A great way to fill your garden with more food
is to be clever with the vertical structures that you do.
In front of you there's a wigwam,
and that's actually taking up raised bed space.
That's no problem.
I can grow runner beans
and interplant it with parsley underneath.
But if you've got raised beds and the gap is small enough,
you could consider actually utilizing
the underused kinda vertical space,
which means in terms of the footprint
on the actual raised bed,
instead of having a wigwam, you're only using, I don't know,
five to seven, two to three inches into the bed.
And that means that you've suddenly
got a lot more space in the bed.
You've got crops growing over the top.
You can harvest all of the runner beans,
and it's just another simple, but also a fun way,
of being able to increase the yields that you get
just by thinking a little bit outside the box
with how you're going to create your structures.
Another clever way of saving space in raised beds
is say if you're wanting to grow things
like peas using an A-frame,
well instead right up against the edge of the raised bed
you could create a trellis system like this.
This is actually using old electric fencing,
and instead of the A-frame taking up say half of the bed,
suddenly it's only going to be the very edge.
And you've got all that extra space to grow more food.
There's another great way to fit in
more crops into your garden.
This is more of a long-term strategy.
It's actually about succession planting.
So in front of me here I've got our main garlic patch,
and this is going to be coming out in July.
So the idea with succession planting
is having crops ready to replace something
that you've just harvested.
This bed here is our only bed dedicated to potatoes,
and for succession planting
it's all about planning ahead, thinking ahead.
These are gonna be harvested around end of June, early July,
which means I need to have seedlings ready to go
around that time to go in as soon as possible,
because if I can fit in more than one main crop
of whatever I'm growing in each area of the garden,
it means I can have twice as many crops.
So when these potatoes are coming out,
this is where I'll then be transplanting the leeks.
This bed here is an example of succession planting.
Last year we grew potatoes.
And then as soon, the day the potatoes were out,
we transplanted the kale.
We're still harvesting now.
These are the kale flower shoots.
In a couple of weeks, this will all be cleared,
and I'll be transplanting a load of things like root veg,
for example beetroot.
So you can see, as much as possible,
when we can fit in and get a constant production of crops
and it doesn't stay empty for too long,
we can fit in more foods.
If you wanna do succession planting effectively,
it's just about having a calendar
and making a note of when your main crops are coming out
so you can start seedlings
to put things in their place as soon as they do.
And I've created an online course
called The Productive Planting Plan,
which shows you how to make a bespoke
month by month planting plan for your garden
so you really can make the most of succession planting.
So if you want to find out more,
head on over to planforabundance.com
and use PLAN 20 at the checkout for 20% off.
Those are my favorite ways of being able
to fit in more crops in and around the garden
to try and grow as much food as possible.
So if you have any questions related to this,
please don't hesitate to ask me
down below in the comments section.
And I look forward to seeing you again soon.
(birds chirping)