Companion Planting

This summer, I tried to practice companion planting by inter planting flowers and herbs in the vegetable garden. The bugs/insects will get attracted to the flowers and will leave the vegetables alone, that is the idea in companion planting. Notice how I sowed my plants in the raised bed on the right side of the walkway in the picture above. French Marigold flowers were first planted around the edge of this raised bed and this was followed by two rows of Arugula greens and then two rows of  Pak Choi, a leafy green vegetables with a thick white bottom. I often use Pak Choi in my cooking whenever I make stir-frys or in making soups. It's really delicious without the bitter taste that one usually gets in Pechay, another green leafy vegetable.   

Even the small holes of the hollow blocks that were used in making the raised beds were planted with small grasses. The root system of these plants goes down deeply and it helps to hold the hollow blocks in place.  In the photo above, you see the French Marigold flowers at the end of this raised bed. That brown triangle structure in the forefront is a home-made welded re-bar tomato cage with one tomato plant inside. In front of the tomato cages are Pack-Choi or Chinese cabbage. Behind this tomato cage is the Sweet Pea trellis. Anyway, to maximize the space and get more produce, I sowed Sweet Peas on both sides of this trellis. Planted next to the front and the back side of the Sweet Peas were lettuce of Lollo Rosso variety. Next to the lettuce facing the walkway, I sowed two rows of  Carrots.

Notice the plants in the small plot under the Green Bean trellis? Those are the Lollo Rosso variety of lettuce that we often use when making a sandwich. I made a walkway around this small plot so I could go around it when I do some weeding on the raised beds. On the left side of the Green Bean trellis is a Zucchini plant.

This is the edge of the garden where I placed the arched trellis for the Green Beans. When I removed the wire mesh fence around the old garden, I left the wire mesh on this side only so I could grow some cucumbers and sweet peas on it. Since these two plants grow in a vertical position, they could use the fence to climb onto as they grow and they could be planted next to each other as well. I also added some Pak-Choi and Petunia flowers in between the Cucumbers and the Sweet Peas.   

 

   

Sweet Pea Trellis

I often use Sweet Peas or Sugar Snap Peas in my stir-fry cooking so I thought about growing my own in the garden instead of buying them in the market. How difficult could it be to raise my own Sweet Peas right? So I looked for whatever materials that I could salvage to use in making my trellis but I could not find anything suitable for my purpose in mind. Then I had this "B-R-I-G-H-T" idea of using an old clothes stand that we have in the house! It is actually the perfect size because it may only be 4 feet wide but it's also 5 feet tall. This is made of 1-inch metal pipe materials with two welded stands and a pipe that goes across the top which holds the stands together. We only use this stand to hang the wet  clothes on hangers or for laundry during the rainy season anyway. So I thought I might as well put it to good use while it is still summer instead of it just laying around in the corner. All I had to do now is to find something that I could put across the width and the height of this structure so the Sweet Peas will have something to climb onto as they grow. Then I thought about the excess 1 x 1 inch wire mesh material that was left over after we built the chicken run and that solved my problem. So, I measured the length and width of the structure and cut the wire mesh according to size and attached this to the stand and Ta-da!  I got a Sweet Pea trellis. That picture below with the square structure is the Sweet Pea trellis and on both sides of it are the tomato cages. Well I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed making the trellis.

Sweet Pea Trellis

Sweet Peas ready for harvest.

Sweet Peas taller than the trellis.