Published: April 2019
While you can always count on us to deliver fresh food for your local grocer, it’s fun to try growing your own vegetables in the summer. It may still be a bit cool at night but you can start planning now, and we found some great tips to maximize use of smaller garden spaces.
The main strategy is called “intercropping,” which is a fancy word for planting things close together that are happy to share the space. There are two tactics: planting fast and slow growers together, and planting tall and short plants together.
For example, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and tomatoes start slow, taking a while to fully grow into the space they’ll eventually need. After planting these veggies, you can grow beets, carrots, spinach, lettuce, and green onions, in between, since you’ll be able to harvest them before the others need the extra space.
The tall vs short planting technique also utilizes trellises to minimize the amount of surface space needed. There are quite a few vegetables that can grow up rather than along the ground. These include pole beans, peas, cucumbers, and even some types of squash, although you’ll have to make sure that you pick the squash before it gets too heavy and falls off the vine. In addition to your trellis frame, vegetables like peas that have thinner tendrils, will need twine or netting to hold on to.
Around the base of your climbing plants, you can grow arugula, lettuce, spinach, and endive, as well as root vegetables like beets, carrots, and onions.
Before planting, be sure to work the soil so that it’s loose with no big lumps. This will minimize the impact on root systems of the taller, longer growing plants when you harvest the short and early vegetables.
Good luck! And remember, if things don’t quite work out, we’ve got your back.
Ameri-Can Logistics Ltd. is a trucking company servicing shipping ports, railroad depots, and communities throughout North America. Operating 24/7/365 with continuous dispatch services, businesses have relied on Ameri-Can to distribute their products to buyers in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, for three decades.
