Planting the Space Between

I keep finding space amid plantings to interplant. It’s a good reminder to scan your gardens for spaces to pair with the right plants.

As I walked around the garden with my hardened off tray of Brussels, sprouts, summer cabbage + broccoli, basil, dill, beets, and lettuce, I focused first on the long-season vegetables. The Brussels sprouts will root down and be in place until November in the garden, assuming the ground doesn’t start to freeze up before then (time will tell). Interplanted between the Brussels sprouts, which are generously spaced between 24-30” on center, I dropped some of the heat tolerant lettuce in between, knowing it will mature quickly and before the sprouts really take hold.

5 Brussels sprouts and 8 heat tolerant lettuce in a roughly 4-x6 foot space.

As I shared in my Instagram stories last week, some of my softneck garlic was looking very sad and wilting. Its never happened to me, and I pulled it all this weekend. I saw this gap as an opportunity to plop something into those empty spaces. Beet seedlings turned out to be the most logical vegetable with it’s modest leaf area and shorter stature than my garlic, which is well on its way to producing scapes. I’ve never interplanted my garlic before, but I’ve also never had gaps this large in my garlic bed, either. So this was a new way for me to interplant, and I’m looking forward to watching how it unfolds over the next 6 weeks or so.

My other favorite interplanting vegetable is radishes. They rarely get their own square footage here, save larger daikon and watermelon types. I wanted to add one more row of quick radishes for late June meals, so decided to saddle up on the outside of my first succession of bush beans, which already has two rows of radishes between the rows that are nearing maturity. Nearby this seeding are zinnia and nasturtium but again, I believe there will be plenty of time before these canopies close for the quick radishes to plump and swell.

My goal is always a “closed canopy” as the interplantings near maturity. This one is making my heart sing. Bush beans sowed 18” apart with radishes sowed in between on same day.

My very favorite new to me interplanting this spring was with my bunching onions. I decided to plant them in, well, bunches! It makes them a quick harvest, grabbing a bundle as needed for suppers. I chose to interplant them with our earliest brassica bed and you guys, it’s been the greatest joy to watch them spike up. Visual interest is so important in our food gardens, and this is truly my new favorite thing!

The interplanted spring onions add an undeniable depth and interest to this spring succession, a planting strategy I will carry forward indefinitely.

The name of the game is mixing maturation rates and stature in a way that the interplantings can thrive in the same space. Are you trying any new interplantings this season?