Intercropping - Carrots Love Tomatoes!

I've been reading the book Carrots Love Tomaotes by the late Louise Riotte - its a great book on companion planting and also a really helpful general garden reference.  Most people know that marigolds (as I overheard at the garden center yesterday) - "keep something bad away from your tomatoes...or something."  But most people don't know that there are plenty of other plants that will protect each other - for example mint planted among cabbage will repel the cabbage butterfly, cucumbers "are offensive to raccoons" so are good to plant with corn to keep them away and corn seems to protect cucumbers from wilt, if you plant garlic in a circle around fruit trees it will protect them from borers.  Did you know any of that?  I didn't.  The book is an excellent reference and her writing style is old-fashioned but cheeky.  This book should be on any gardener's shelf.
 
So, with Louise as my guide, I'm trying to do a little more intercropping than I have in the past - while some parts of my garden are just rows of stuff (with consideration about what is to each side), others are (or are going to be) more of a blend.  The three-sisters area (which I'm repeating from last year) is an example of this, but this year I'm doing a different take on a tomato patch.

I had just watered it before this picture was taken, so it gives a better visual.  To break it down - there's a big square, segmented into 4 smaller squares. The big square is marigolds around the border (I just put some full grown ones in as markers, but there are others seeded along  the sides) and also intersecting the large square and basil at every corner and at the intersection in the middle.  Each smaller square will be a tomato plant in the center, an onion at each corner, and one or two Paris Market carrots (I've just ordered them from Seed Savers (dot) org) at the North/South/East/West points on the smaller squares.

This is what a Paris Market carrot looks like:

Isn't that fun?  I'm so excited about them.

These are some of my more-developed seedlings having some outside time.  Three corn plants and two luffas (which are for the aforementioned 3-sisters area), a cucumber, an eggplant, and two tomato plants.

I'm sure that my neighbors will be happy when this is gone.  There are a few bigger (purchased - I'm impatient) tomato plants, a stevia, some extra basil and some trays of corn, watermelon, jenny lind melon, and pumpkin seeds that just went in yesterday.  On the sides are pots of morning glory that are staying there and hopefully swallowing up the railing.

And speaking of things that I impulsively bought at the garden center yesterday - lime tree!  With limes!  Anyone have a good name for a lime tree?

Out in the garden-proper - the broccoli is starting to make food!

The lettuce is starting to look like salad!

Beets are really starting to do their thing!

And it won't be long before my Titans will be knee-high!

Little by little...

A few days ago, the flowering plum out front burst open!  All weekend-long there were bees everywhere doing their pollinating-best.  Gertie, of course, was doing her best to eat them.  Luckily, she was unsuccessful.

The forsythia are open too:

They're actually on their way out, I think.

There's a cherry in the patio area that's really thinking of joining them, but it hasn't happened yet - I'm guessing that the next warm day after all this rain, we'll get cherry blossoms too.

I'm looking for a good hummingbird feeder and some solar lanterns to hang from it - I'm feeling festive right now.  Spring!

In veggie news:

 It's seedling city.  I have 8 sprouted tomatoes, a bunch of onions and my full complement of brussels sprouts.  I have seen neither sprout or stem of the eggplant...and I just put the squash and the cukes in, so it'll be a week or so before they poke their heads out.

This is my flower  (etc) row - a peony (it's a pretty recent addition, so it's not sprouted too high yet), the mint which is not out at all, recently seeded morning glories, some new little poppy-lings, a bushy little lavender, a dormant rose bush, the other peony, and some container-ed salad greens.

I'm really excited about the poppies- they didn't come in last year.

They're obviously all too close together, but when they're bigger and can take it, I'm going to transplant some of them out into the garden.

This is the larger of the two peonies:

I'm really looking forward to being able to cut these and put them all over the house.  They're my favorite favorites and the double-white is super classy looking.  These are festiva maxima (they apparently have a bit of a fuschia tip on some of the center petals).

Next up, spinaches:

Left one is container spinach, right one is ground growing.  You can see the plum flower petals on the ground there.

The container chard is just thinking about putting up true leaves and there are a few tiny in-ground sproutlings, but not as impressive as the spinach yet.

I've never grown head lettuce, but it's really starting to look like lettuce- I think it's really cute!

The garlic I transplanted is feeling cheerful:

I also put some impulse-bought brocolli in, I've never had luck with it from seed:

I also have beets and carrots coming up:

The carrot seeds were from a few years ago, so I put a lot in just to make sure...I'm clearly going to have to think the heck out of them.

This is the overall shot right now...obviously it's more dirt than plants..and the soil really needs to be ammended, I'm starting, but it's going to be a long process.  After this rain, I'm hoping to get a bunch of maure turned in...it's just a lot easier when the ground is wet.  I may also make the starbucks rounds for a new set of grounds.

Oh - and of course, the rain has brought a bunch of new sprouts out - the strawberry popped up today.  I'm hoping for some preliminary morning glory action - there are some volunteers from pervious years grown in the chink between the fence and the sidewalk that Rita (the landlady) says come back every year, but they're dwindling.  I've seeded a bunch into pots here and there and will probably be less picky about getting all the seed off the plant so that she can have some fresh blood for her fence.

How I threw my back out...or...the garden is done!

I took this picture on Friday-- so a week ago-- and some of you may have seen it already, but this is how my garden looked at that time:


Click for large and legible version.

It feels good to have gotten all the veggies in and I'm so excited about my three-sisters area. I'm sort of following this guide here.

Basically you plant corn and when the corn is 6 inches high, you plant peas or beans which climb up the corn and bind nitrogen into the soil. Then you plant a vine crop like a squash or a melon which shades the roots and helps keep the weeds down. Genius.

So I have corn, sugar snap peas, and then I'm going to do one mound of melon and two mounds of spaghetti squash.

After the week I had-- Monday and Tuesday clearing the ground and fenceline, Wednesday roto-tilling and sifting the soil (with help from Dougie and Anastasia), Thursday hauling three pick up trucks' worth of yard waste and logs by myself (but I got to use the new chainsaw!!), and then Friday planting it all...plus shooting 2 long weddings Friday and Saturday...when I bent down to tie my shoes on Sunday, I couldn't stand back up again. So I've been seeing a muscular therapist and am mending well but still in pain. Damn it. I still haven't learned to pace myself-- I'm either all in or...not.

Also, Anastasia wanted me to share her chicken coop plans:





As always-- click for large and legible.

Carrots

I pulled about half the carrots out of the container yesterday and they got mixed into a salad. About half the ones I pulled were ready to come out and the other half were tiny, but still very edible. Yay carrot harvest!



I love growing food.

Root Crops!

My beet, ready to eat.


Young carrot-- tasty even at this size.