Polyculture

Polyculture simply means growing (culture) two or more plants (poly) together in a particular space. For those of us with flower gardens, I'll wager it isn't just one species in blocks or rows. Your garden is probably a visually pleasing mix of plants, a polyculture. Using companion planting techniques in a vegetable garden or mixing a few handsome vegetables or herbs in a flower bed are examples of polyculture. When we surround one or more fruit or nut trees with shrubs and/or perennial flowers and herbs, we have a polyculture.

There are lots of benefits to growing polycultures and I don't know many reasons not to. There are guides available in which the author suggests various plants that work well together for the author. While I can say that there are plant pairs that are tried and true, like basil and tomatoes, there are others that generally work well - but not always. Keep a record of your successes and examine your disappointments.

What are some of the benefits of companions for your veggies? Legumes can feed their neighbors, like beans sharing the nitrogen they take from the air, convert to nitrate, and share with nearby corn. Sunflowers can support a vine of decorative mini-gourds. Companion plants can attract beneficial insects. They might confuse or deter pest insects. Some pairs just look pretty together. Sometimes one partner dies back or is cut down when the partner is planted, as in the case of cover crops. But, your companions may not always work the same way as they did in the book or article you are using as a guide.

Most of the time, the reason a particular grouping of plants didn't work well for me is because I hadn't considered all the characteristics of the plants I put together. For instance, I tried growing bush beans with potatoes, thinking that beans would help potatoes because they help corn by fixing and sharing nitrogen. I grew one row of potatoes with quick maturing bush green beans next to it. I got some good potatoes, but I uprooted the beans when I harvested the potatoes.

In another experiment, wide-spreading cabbage leaves smothered their neighboring onions. This only works if I leave more room between cabbage plants for onions. Winter squashes planted beneath pole beans are a good match, but remember to train the squash vines out of the way so you can pick the beans!

The companions I enjoy most are flowers planted between vegetables. Some flowers are attractive to pollinators, giving native bees a boost. Some beneficial insects eat flower nectar as adults, but their larvae need to eat insects. Plant nectar-producing flowers, then look for ladybugs feeding on the blossoms - and spending time among your vegetables searching for aphids where they will lay their eggs. Flowers of the carrot family (examples: dill and coriander) and sunflower family are good choices. Did the nasturtiums keep the squash bugs away from my zucchini as suggested? Not entirely, but the red and orange nasturtiums were pretty next to the large yellow flowers on the zukes.

Can a tall plant support a vine? Yes! That's part of the Three Sisters story. Corn, beans and vining squashes planted together support each other in a specific polyculture arrangement. Corn grows straight and tall, but it needs fertility. Pole beans are nitrogen fixers but they need support. Squashes need room to sprawl, and their large leaves take up lots of space. The three compliment each other well. There are several stories about how this arrangement developed, but whatever the origin and however many generations it took to breed compatible plants and find the best arrangement, it is a marvel of Indigenous ingenuity.

According to Native American Gardening (M.J.Caduto and J.Bruchac, 1996), the Wampanoag plant fields of corn in mounds. After the corn sprouts, they plant beans and in the same mounds and squash in mounds between the bean-corn mounds. I tried this arrangement and by the time the corn tasseled, the beans vined up the corn stalks and began to flower. The squash were running rampant around the mounds, and there were not as many weeds as when squash were planted alone.

Cover crops are another plant combination opportunity a gardener can try. During the growing season, as one crop finishes I like to plant a cover crop to fill the space and enhance soil health. The choice depends on what's next for that piece of ground. Early maturing broccoli and kale can be removed and replaced with short-lived buckwheat. Once the buckwheat flowers, it's cut to prevent reseeding. It can sit on the soil to compost in place, or removed to the composter to make room for fall carrots, beets, and lettuce. This year I planted a mix of oats and nitrogen-fixing crimson clover after I harvested the potatoes, thus feeding and protecting the soil through the winter. The oats die during the winter and the clover gets cut in the spring. I plan to plant broccoli and cabbage within this cover crop mulch this spring. Yes, another experiment.

Gardening is an outlet for my "let's see what happens if . . ." tendency, and polyculture lends itself to experimentation. Those Indigenous gardeners saved their best seeds, tried various planting arrangements and kept their learning alive in the stories they told on long winter nights. Our lives are not so intimately tied to a successful harvest as theirs, so what was necessity to them becomes experimentation to me. But I believe as the summers become hotter, perhaps drier or stormier, and we deal with more pests who aren't playing by the last decades' rules, we gardeners can find ways to be creative, successful and enjoy our time in the soil. Companion planting can be pleasurable and useful, too.

Debby Luquette is a Penn State Master Gardener from Adams County. Penn State Cooperative Extension of Adams County is located at 670 Old Harrisburg Road, Suite 204, Gettysburg, phone 334-6271.

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