Polyculture Plant Density 

I truly appreciate your logical approach to try to maximize the results from this garden in an environmentally friendly way, especially since, as you've indicated many times, gardening is as much an art as it is a science. Your videos are always interesting and thoughtful.

Love the continueing project but especially that calm voice

Great flick again. In particular, I really appreciate how you try to cut to the factual core of your topics, avoiding to repeat unsupported beliefs.

This is my favorite gardening video! I need to plant a polyculture garden, because I have so little space and sun issues. This was very inspirational and I will watch it many times.

I ended up with a poly culture garden but it wasn't planned. We had leftover plant starts that would have been thrown away, so we planted next to a crop about ready to come out. They didn't grow much above ground until we cut the other veggies out , but usually we did well. The soil was clay originally but we added a semi load of composted leaves to 1/4 acre. The soil turned black and dried out easily. We also foliar fed the crowded plants and when the old plants were cut out

Another good one!

Thanks always leave me thinking.

Hello, I rarely take the time to like or comment but I wanted to say that I really like all of your video. Your honesty and cartesian approach are great. Thank you for your work!

This seems line an interesting system for a small garden, but I can't imagine the management headaches for any size. The most I do is interplant to take advantage of space and/or time. One example that works well for me is a row of artichoke plants down the middle of a bed, about 1.5m apart, then squash or melon plants down the middle of the bed, with a row of head lettuce along each side of the bed. A 15m bed gives me about 100 heads of lettuce in about 6 weeks, about the time squash or melon plants are starting to impinge on them, and the tall artichoke plants never notice the squash plants crawling around under them, or vice versa. I also plant a lot of quick growing or small crops along the edges of beds of other crops, such as a row of onions, lettuce or other greens that get in and out quickly.

Double cover everything tonight! Going to be ccccold!

I must thank you once again for explaining everything to the ground! Polyculture gardening is indeed fascinating and definitely most suitable for people, whose gardens are small or not well-run yet. I personally prefer the simple garden method, but the polyculture garden is the one I'll definitely give a go this season!

Great video/channel. I like the "let's see what happens" approach.

I have to admit I'm hooked on the looks of a monoculture vs. polyculture. Even to the point of finishing out a row to look "good." Even if I'm positive, I can't sell that much. My compost pile is my friend.

Excellent video, very informative ❤

I applaud you for trying new things, even if they are less organized & different than what you are used to.

Thank you for sharing this information with us

Stumbled across your vlog and this was so perfect for me! Have always grown polyculture gardens (vegies, herbs,flowers) even before it became "cool", but have struggled with some of the same problems and it is so great to see that articulated - so often, in books and even videos it is made to seem so easy. Have been doing this for many years and have learned some stuff, for sure, but still experimenting especially now that we moved and are gardening mostly in stock tanks rather than in the ground. I am a scientist and it is maddening sometimes that there are so many variables in gardening that make it difficult to evaluate data. Dont' know if you will see this post, but have you seen a decrease in insect pressure with polyculture? I do think that I do, but still my kale will be overrun with aphids to a disgusting degree even with spraying them off daily. It is discouraging sometimes.

Strongly suggest you find the perfect hat and wear it all the time. Nice friable looking soil!

I enjoy your gardening style

getting the right plant density without having to spend a lot of energy on thinning is something I am always trying to figure out. Integrating perennials is my favorite way to polyculture. This seems to work the best for me with clusters of perennials like thyme, rosemary, sage, tarragon, garlic chives, walking onions, lovage, tree collards. Any spaces left over I try to get a few lettuces or chard to fill in, slowly the perennials take over.

So much information in your videos. Thank you very much!

I use poly culture in my little yard and get very nice harvest but I put my large bigger crops towards the center of my square foot plan and the use scaffolding of some sort to make sure they stay vertical. This has worked great but does take a decent amount of material. My zone is 7b so I am fairly close to your environment.

This is incredible helpful for my garden. Thank you!

Great video. Since moving to this new management style for this garden, have you seen improvements in pest prevention I.e., less carrot root fly problems ?

I have some multi sown leeks this year, I am very excited about having lots of leeks thisi year. I love making broth and love having leeks for it. I cant wait to have the garden full of life and booming

Interesting as always. Thanks.

Facinating insight, I can imagine it would take me days to do a similar analysis for my garden, I could give myself a headache just thinking about it! Much appreciated!

That was so useful. I have had to reduce the size if my growing space and this could be a way I could get more from my plot. Looking forward to trying it. Thank you for the inspiration.

Thanks for another great video! I would be really interested to learn how you manage your time and tasks in the garden. It seems like you achieve so much, you must have to be organised.

Very well broken down. I’ll be avoiding polyculture. Reliable square meters of monocrops seems more maintainable

NEW FRIEND.

I can see this polyculture garden style garden being very hard to manage for the average person. You need a pretty decent understanding of each plant's needs, growing habits, and harvest times. Plus, you need to be on top of any mistakes early, as they will affect so many other plants around them. That's no reason not to have a polyculture bed. Most salad crop beds already lean that way, with a mix of fast-growing crops. The trick would be to mix in some slower growing crop, and transition the bed over the year from salad to more autumn/winter crops. It's an interesting idea, and we all want to grow more verities than we can dedicate a bed to. So going with this concept in one bed will let you branch out a little. Whilst still getting a dependable crop from your other more conventional beds.

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How's the pest damage in the poly culture beds compared to the mono culture beds?

Squash grows well with beans and corn. Look up three sisters and give it a try this season!

Of your gardens this is the one the most closely resembles my raised bed garden, where essentially I have 20 beds, each 120x80cm, where I plant at high density inter planted crops. It’s challenging to keep up with this type of garden, especially if you have little time, and you need a lot of planning on available resources, such as light and water. It also makes it harder to plan any sort of irrigation system and forces me to hand water everything every day in the mid of summer especially here in Italy with the heat we have been having over the last few years

I noticed a white butterfly in your clip...we have trouble with them in Tasmania Australia. I wish i had soil like what you've got. Your garden looks really good. Good effort.

Bruce, where did you learn all this garden info. College, university or learning as you go experience. Always interesting info. Thanks

I think I'm going to try this this year. I have the time but not a lot of space and I plan to plant in this space year after year. I would hope this method will help with the pests that can build over years because I won't be able to rotate plants very far from where they were planted last year. It sounds like the only real draw back is attention time but if space is limited I feel like I have more time than I have space to garden so it's a great trade off.

I think the time of the year also makes a difference, lettuce can be closer together when it's warmer and there is more light and plants are growing faster.

Do you grow pickling onions? They could be a good crop for this system.

I need to be more structured and decisive, if an area is not yeilding by pulling up and replanting. You need to have a planting regime every two weeks.

Brassicas don’t fit in this system because of moths. Nettings are too much effort if everything needs a net.

Poly cultures are beautiful. I started our family garden this way, and actually came to the same conclusion. . . its just not practical for someone with limited time who needs to feed their family.

Interesting design breakthrough. Is weeding challenging?

Hi! Can you describe how to make your fertilizer mix? Thank you.

I wonder what it is, about growing some of the squashes and such for you? About Carrot. Why do we plant about 3 or 4 cm apart but rows about 30cm? Why not the same distance in each dimension? Most carrot root is so narrow, straight taproot. As opposed to the veggies the branch wildly

… there seems to be a very successful trend with growing squashes vertically (lots of RU-vid videos available on it) … maybe that technique would work in your polyculture bed better than letting it sprawl …

this might be off topic but... curious what pants you are wearing and what kind of tool belt are you carrying. what do you carry in it? garden work is dirty, muddy, and we need easy cloths to jump in and get work done. can you recommend a gardening "load out?" for all the work done, what tools and equipment do you use and recommend? i would love to have a video run down of what you carry. Thanks!

I think polyculture works better with interplanting. The idea is the mature plant provides shade and moisture for a seedling. The seedling can quickly establish a relationship with microbes and fungi that's been nurtured by the mature plant.

Also, maybe combine plants where roots don't inhabit the same space?

I would argue that a polyculture garen should be maybe 25% of your garden space, just to roll with the punches of a bad year and still get some yield in bad years. This would require a more hands on approach or at least being in close proximity for observation and directional nudges through the season. I think it's particularly ill suited to your situation with limited focus.

Why not interplant carrots and radishes? When the thinning time comes, you'll simply harvest the radishes. And I can't believe you didn't try the 3 sisters with the squash :)

Unrelated but i wonder why you keep using dead dry plants in thr background when you're talking...i know you definitely have beautiful green lush plants why why not stand in front of them? Sorry, just a small stylistic choice

Hey Bruce!