How to Intercrop Salad Greens For Extra Harvests

Garden salads taste far superior to those found in plastic bags at grocery stores, and growing your own is both rewarding and economical! Growing them yourself makes for an exciting challenge – not only can it save money but it can be great fun too.

Salad plants include cool season vegetables like chives and parsley, as well as low maintenance flowers such as nasturtiums that act as pest disrupters. They thrive best in cool conditions with consistent moisture.

Varieties

Salad greens grow at different rates, so it is crucial that you follow the specific planting instructions on each seed packet. Aim to sow a small portion of lettuce every 7-10 days depending on variety, in order to ensure a steady harvest that does not suddenly become abundant or deficient during its growing season. By sowing seeds regularly throughout the growing season you will ensure an uninterrupted supply and ensure an ongoing harvest throughout its growing period rather than having too much one month and not enough another.

Planting quick-maturing crops like radishes, green onions and lettuce at different intervals helps extend garden harvest season and is commonly known as staggering or succession planting.

There is a wide range of leafy salad greens suitable for planting with slow-growing vegetables, such as spinach, kale and chard. Other popular choices are rocket, arugula and watercress; all can be purchased either mixed together or individually. Certain leaves also fall within the French term mesclun which includes tender young gourmet salad greens that may also be packed as baby cavolo nero (blackish chard).

Planting salad greens alongside slower-growing vegetables is an effective way to protect them from frost and cold. Arugula and radishes can be grown among rows of peas and beans to provide protection from winter weather, early frost, as well as retain nutrients by drawing up vital minerals from beneath their roots.

Interplanting Method

Interplanting (also referred to as relay planting or alternating crops), is an efficient method for optimizing garden yield. As one crop matures and harvests are completed, another crop is planted and harvested – particularly beneficial when dealing with slower-growing vegetables such as mesclun greens, radishes, Swiss chard and beets.

Interplanting is an intensive vegetable gardening method designed to take advantage of every inch of space available and is especially popular among those growing food in small gardens. Interplanting pairs slow-growing plants with fast-maturing ones so you can harvest various kinds of produce throughout the season, for instance planting radishes and leaf lettuce between pepper, eggplant, corn or tomato plants provides fresh greens once these larger ones begin to decline in height.

And to increase its output even more, consider interplanting herbs and flowers that provide both nutritional benefits as well as disguising pests from your greens. Nasturtium flowers in particular make great companions as they attract beneficial insects that repel some common garden pests while adding beauty and color to the garden.

Interrupters

Intercropping fast-growing crops such as arugula and mizuna with slower vegetables speeds up harvest time for salad bowls, helps deter pests, creates more natural, sustainable gardens and may reduce pesticide usage. Other natural insect repellants may include herbs such as basil or rosemary; flowers like marigolds may work just as effectively, working alongside various kinds of veggies.

Other plants like fennel and parsley make excellent intercroppers due to their high nutrient content, while providing an interesting contrast with darker greens in a salad bowl. Heat-tolerant varieties of Malabar spinach and New Zealand spinach thrive all summer in containers or on trellises.

Intercropping fast-growing radishes with slower-growing vegetables such as carrots can provide you with fresh homegrown greens for salad bowls much sooner than would otherwise be the case. Simply remember to harvest both harvest before too much has grown out.

Intercropping requires keeping the soil damp, which can easily be achieved using your gentle setting on a hose and checking daily to see how much watering has taken place. Without adequate moisture in your soil, growing greens will be impossible and salad seeds and young plants require consistent, even watering in order to germinate and develop their shallow roots properly.

Harvesting

One way to extend harvests is through intercropping. This ancient technique, also known as companion planting, works well at reducing pest problems and making efficient use of limited space in garden beds – for instance when planted between rows of carrots radishes can protect their roots from weeds until time to thin and harvest the slow-growing carrots, leaving you space enough to collect harvest the slow-growing ones as soon as they’re ready!

Mixing crops that prefer similar temperatures is another effective strategy to increase harvests from one garden bed. This can be accomplished in various ways; such as sowing fast germinating vegetables such as radishes as marker crops alongside brassicas that take longer to emerge; or sowing leaf lettuce between slow growing endive and escarole so it fills in any empty spaces left by these slow vegetables and has grown sufficiently to shade out any weeds by the time harvest time arrives.

Produce producers must strive for maximum speed and efficiency in Postharvest handling to preserve quality as much as possible. This requires allocating enough labor, procuring supplies such as containers and packaging items, cleaning the grading/packaging shed thoroughly, and verifying all equipment is operational.