Intercropping & Catch Cropping 2

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Increase your harvest with intercropping and catch cropping part 2 of 3

By: Richard Bailey, Wallington, Surrey

To Keep in Rotational Groups or Not?

Intercropping sprouts as I have described raises one important point of principle. Do you intercrop with plants of the same general type (i.e. those that would be in the same group in a crop rotation) as your main crop? Or do you use other types?

The arguments for selecting crops from the same general type are those you would use for any form of crop rotation. You prevent the build up of soil borne or other pests and disease. You can treat both crops for the same plagues. And each crop will need the same basic nutrients - making it easier to work out what fertilisers to apply. Yet if you mix your crop types then the reverse advantages are true. Soil borne and other pestilences are less likely to endanger both crops and one crop will not pass its plagues to the other. And you are using a far wider range of nutrients from the soil, fewer, therefore, will leach into the subsoil.

It could be said that growers using modest or high chemical inputs will favour intercropping with plants of the same crop group - to have the advantages of a near monoculture.

Organic growers, however, are more likely to favour the multicultural approach. There are advantages and arguments both ways -1 personally go with the multicultural approach. But then I have always thought that the benefits of crop rotation on a small scale are greatly exaggerated (and frequently impractical as well).

Many other intercropping schemes can be developed. Any rapidly maturing crop, and this includes most salads, can be used as an intercrop.

I might mention just one more example. Once I have planted my potatoes I grow a few short rows of salad mustard over the top before the potatoes break through. This has the added advantage of reducing the wireworm population if I turn in the mustard roots after I have cut the seedling crop. (Incidentally, if you are troubled with wireworms in your potatoes it is worth sowing salad mustard very thinly over the ground a week or so before you earth up. It may not get rid of the pest completely but it will reduce their number.)

Catch Cropping

Catch cropping really does differ little from intercropping in principle. The same discussion can rage as to whether you use crops from the same or different rotational groups. And you are still using a variety of crops with a short time from sowing or planting to maturity.

In practice, however, it differs in that you are normally growing a small area of one crop rather than an intimate mixture of two or more.

Most, but certainly not all, catch cropping opportunities come early or late in the season. Look at any vegetable plot in May and you are likely to find it only sparsely covered with crops. The crops that are there will mostly be small and there will be significant areas of bare soil. Yet by midsummer's day, 21 st June, we have had half the year's daylight (I nearly wrote sunshine but could hear people asking - "Sunshine?"). Catch crops can help you to use the first half of the year better and still let you get your long-term crops out in good time. And it can help again in the second half - far too many plots are half empty by early October.

Perhaps some examples would help to drive the point home. My earliest lettuces come from sowings of 'Little Gem' made under cold glass in February. They are usually ready to be set out in the open by the end of March and are cut as small heads by the end of May. The space they occupied is then used for marrows or tomatoes - or perhaps for autumn cauliflowers.

This is part two of three:

Increase your harvest with intercropping and catch cropping part 1

Increase your harvest with intercropping and catch cropping part 2

Increase your harvest with intercropping and catch cropping part 3

This article originally appeared in the Members Bulletin, the journal of the National Vegetable Society, which is sent quarterly to members. You can Join the National Vegetable Society here

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