Thursday, July 19, 2012

Companion Planting

We have planting more sneaky  vegetables masquerading as landscaping on our 2012 DIY Project List like we did by accident last summer during our porch and landscaping rennovation. The results were delicious!

 This is one of my favorite photos of Blitzkrieg because he did a perfect sit stay while I turned my back and walked away from him to get everything in the photo.

One of the best things about the project is it an US hobby and not either a Lisa hobby or a Husband hobby. We both share in the gardening responsibilities although we like to say Lisa built it and Husband grew it.

Last January, when Husband and I were running errands, we saw vegetables seeds for sale! We let our stomachs be our guide and bought seeds on the spot.

This photo might look familiar to you if you follow me @condoblues on Twitter and Instagram.

Later, our local Asian market had their spring seeds for sale. Husband and I went a little nutty there too. We figure it is much cheaper to grow specialty Asian vegetables using a $3.00 packet of seeds than buy them at the Asian or farm market every week.


We shopped with our stomachs here too.

While we chomped at the bit for our frost date to pass and plant our little seeds, I researched companion planting thinking it was only for pest control.

Uh, not always.

While some plants discourage pests from eating your plants like planting marigolds next to pretty much anything, it turns out the idea of companion planting is more about some vegetables won’t grow if they are planted next to other vegetables. I used this vegetable companion planting chart as my guide.

Oh.

Well, that might explain why we only got six tomatoes from four tomatoes plants last year. Apparently, tomato plants do not like to be next to lavender. And here we thought it was the sometimes shade in the front yard.

Last summer's edible landscape

The Condo Blues whammy bonked us on the head again. Husband and I have seeds for plants that don’t like to live together. This is a problem when you have limited gardening space like we do.

Think, think, thinkidy think.

Both varieties of Chinese cabbage won’t grow well with almost everything else we have.  Husband and I decided to give them their own bed around the tree in our front yard. Three bags of manure and top soil later, the cabbage is happily growing in their own island nation.

 We needed such a small amount we had to go with plastic bags of poo and dirt from the garden center instead of a bulk delivery.

The tomatoes are as far from the lavender as we can get in the small bed. The basils and oregano grow happily at their feet.  

We have no idea if the peas (a freebie from a health fair we attended last year) and beans can live together or next to the lavender or tomatoes. For every article we said they could we found another article that said they couldn’t. We are throwing caution to the wind and planting them on the trellises. We’ll see what happens. So far, the beans and lavender are BFFs. The peas are ticked we planted them late.

I took the opportunity to knock adding slates to the bean trellis I built from fence posts off my 2012 DIY To Do List.

From this.

To this.

The bitter melon does not want to live with anything in our garden! Bitter melon is one of the vegetables Husband is most excited about growing too. I suggested we plant the bitter melon in self watering planter on the back patio. You know what that means. I get to try my hand at building a self watering planter.

So far, everything is sprouting. I hope that our backwards planning pays off in a freezer full of vegetables.

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5 comments:

Kathryn Ferguson Griffin said...

I love your bean trellis! And, the dog is so cute. Thank you for sharing. Visiting from DIY Dreamer. Would love it if you would share this at my Make it Pretty Monday party at The Dedicated House. http://thededicatedhouse.blogspot.com/2012/07/make-it-pretty-monday-week-7.html Hope to see you at the bash! Toodles, Kathryn @TheDedicatedHouse

Christine said...

LOVE the look of the trellis!!!

I wouldn't have thought tomatoes and lavender would have been a problem!

Thanks so much for sharing this at The DIY Dreamer.. From Dream To Reality!!

Daniela @Frugal Aint Cheap said...

good to know!

Kathryn Ferguson Griffin said...

Thank you for sharing this at my Make it Pretty Monday party at The Dedicated House. Hope to see your prettiness again on Monday. Toodles, Kathryn @TheDedicatedHouse

Unknown said...

Love this post. We try to utilize companion planting but between the deer, heat, drought and bunnies, our garden has been a bust. Maybe next year (hope springs eternal in a gardener's soul!) Thanks for sharing on tout It Tuesday! Hope to see you tomorrow.

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