June 17, 2025 • 46 mins
From experimenting with peas shading lettuces to using mint as a living mulch for kale and cucumbers, this week on Just Grow Something I share the successes, tweaks, and surprises of my spring growing season. If you’re looking to maximize yield, minimize weeds, and experiment with companion planting, this episode is packed with all the things. And these can all be repeated for fall! Let's dig in!
What We Cover:
- How to use “high, low, fast, slow” principles in garden planning
- The pros and cons of using mint as a living mulch
- Pairings that worked: Beets & kale, Collards and mint
- What didn't work, maybe?: Kohlrabi & beets
- How my vegetable persona is... okra?!
References and Resources:
Save 20% on your new own-root rose plant at Heirloom Roses with code JUSTGROW https://heirloomroses.comGet 10% off and FREE shipping on my favorite raisedplanters at Planter Box Direct using code JUSTGROW10: https://planterboxdirect.com/?ref=593
Just Grow Something: https://justgrowsomething.com
Just Grow Something Merch andDownloads: https://justgrowsomething.com/shop
Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group:https://www.facebook.com/share/g/18YgHveF5P/Check out how you can become a patron on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JustGrowSomething
Bonus content for supporters of the Podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/justgrowsomething
Amazon storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/justgrowsomething
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I always encourage experimentingwith new techniques in the
garden, which is why I talk so often about inter planting and
companion planting. These techniques are not as well
known to a lot of gardeners, andit can take some time to break
out of the habit of having everything planted in nice neat
rows by themselves and move intocloser spacing and even very
(00:24):
intensive plantings. My experience this spring
involved a lot of very close butstrategic pairings in my raised
planters, and I have my usual combinations both in my planters
and in my in ground beds, like planting lettuce and green
onions and sweet alyssum in and amongst my cabbage and my
broccoli and my cauliflower, forexample.
That's something that I do everyyear, but I've usually been a
(00:47):
little bit more cautious with the spacing in my raised beds
for a number of reasons, and I'll talk about those
considerations in the episode today.
I did try a couple of new combinations in some of my in
ground beds this spring, but I really went for it this year in
terms of pushing the limits of what I can grow in a very
(01:07):
concentrated space in my raised beds.
And let me tell you, the resultshave been kind of astonishing.
Some of them have really knockedit out of the park.
Some of them could use some tweaking and there are one or
two that I will change up a little bit, but that will
absolutely be repeated now everysingle year.
So today on Just Grow Something,I will reveal to you 8 new ways
(01:31):
that I interplanted crops in my garden beds, how I did it, how
well they worked and what I'll change for next season.
Hopefully you will be inspired to really push the envelope in
your garden spaces too, so that you can end up with fewer weeds,
a higher yield, and more bang for your gardening buck.
Let's dig in. Hey, I'm Karen and what started
(01:53):
as a small backyard garden 20 years ago turned into a lifelong
passion for growing food. Now as a market farmer and
horticulturist, I want to help you do the same.
On this podcast, I am your friend in the garden, teaching
evidence based techniques to help you grow your favorites and
build confidence in your own garden space.
So grab your garden journal and a cup of coffee and get ready to
(02:13):
just grow something. So before we jump into spring
interplanting, I have to share this with you, one of my mentees
with the Beginning Farmer Rancher Grant program.
Rachel asked me a question at the farmers last weekend that I
absolutely loved, and now I haveto ask you the same question.
(02:35):
So she said that she'd been listening to the podcast and she
mentioned that she noticed that a lot of the time I sort of give
the different vegetables their own personas.
So for instance, I always say, you know, carrots are Divas.
And here is why I think carrots are Divas kind of a thing.
So she said this got her to thinking and she asked me, what
(02:56):
vegetable are you? I thought this was brilliant.
I thought this was so fun. So I took some time to think and
I decided I am okra now. Stick with me here, OK?
Okra, right can be planted just about anywhere.
It's not super picky about putting their roots down, even
in less than ideal soil conditions.
(03:18):
It can be very pretty if it wants to be, but that's not its
main purpose, not the main reason behind why we grow okra.
Too much exposure to okra can sometimes lead to irritation in
some people. Other people can handle it just
fine. It does just fine being totally
(03:39):
neglected, but give it just a little bit of attention and it
can really take off. And then once okra gets going,
it just keeps on going and going, like kind of like the
Energizer Bunny all season long until a hard freeze finally
takes it down. I am okra.
I think all of these things pertain to my personality and
(04:03):
how I do things. So now it's your turn.
So Rachel and her husband Michael both shared with me what
their vegetable personas are andthey both made total sense once
they explained the characteristics, which was just
super fun. So I want to know yours.
If you're listening in Spotify or on YouTube, just drop your
comment below. You can reply to this morning's
(04:25):
e-mail if you're on the e-mail list or you can send me Adm on
social. I want to hear what vegetable
you are. I mean, I'll accept a fruit too,
OK, If that's that's more appropriate for you, that's
fine. So what vegetable or fruit
defines you and why? OK, let me know.
I cannot wait to read these. OK, so spring inter plantings,
(04:51):
what worked great for me, what needs to be tweaked?
And is there anything that I'm just not going to repeat?
Let's start with the in ground beds.
And as I go through this, I willkind of give you the details on
the sizes of the beds. And then once we move into the
planters, I'll give you the direction or the the dimensions
on those with the in ground beds.
(05:11):
I did sort of two new combinations.
The first one was to start with planting lettuces with sugar
snap peas and then into tomatoes.
So not only are we doing intercroppings with some of
these, some of them are also inter plantings into succession
plantings or into relay plantings, right.
(05:34):
So this first bed area is reallya 30 foot long by I think 25 to
30 foot wide sort of square space.
And So what I did was I took that 30 foot long bed and I
broke it down into rows or beds that were 5 foot wide.
(05:54):
And then we put up cattle panel for trellises.
So we're running north to South and the panels are on the West
side of those beds. So obviously our sun is going
east to West, right? So I planted the sugar snap peas
on the West side of those panelsand then I planted my lettuces
in those beds on the other side of those panels.
(06:17):
And so the idea with this was that the sugar snap peas would
grow up the trellises. And as it got later in the
season and it started to get warmer as the sun would go down
on the West side of those beds, that the sugar snap peas could
shade the lettuces. So those peas weren't going to
(06:38):
get so tall early enough that itwould impede the growth of those
lettuces. But the hope was that once we
started to get really hot, at least it would provide some
afternoon shade. And that would extend the
lifespan of those lettuces beingharvested out of those beds once
the soil warmed up. Because obviously these are two
(07:00):
cool weather crops, right? The lettuces and the peas.
But I needed to utilize that bedfor the entire season.
So I started planting my tomatoes and I did this on along
the trellis, but on the other side from where the peas are.
So if the trellis is running north to South and it's on the
West side of the bed, the peas were on the West side of the
(07:22):
trellis and the tomatoes are on the east side.
So they're still up against the trellis and the tomatoes are the
the lettuces are still in the beds, but the tomatoes are going
in against the trellis as I'm pulling those lettuces out.
So I would harvest the lettuce that was closest to the trellis
first as I was interplanting those tomatoes.
I will say the effect of having the peas shade the lettuce has
(07:48):
worked be beautifully. Normally, you know, this has
been a very wet spring for us. And as a result that has kind of
kept the temperatures cool and that intermittent rain has
helped to keep the root zones cool on a lot of these plants.
Plus, of course, as usual, I am I'm using heavy layers of straw
mulch too, so that's also keeping them cool.
(08:09):
But I will say that that afternoon shade for those
lettuces has done wonders for extending the season.
Normally, you know, by the firstweek in June, the lettuces have
turned bitter because it's just gotten too hot.
But I harvested some beautiful iceberg lettuce out of those
(08:33):
beds that was not bitter in any way, shape or form.
It was just succulent and crunchy and amazing.
And before you come at me about it being iceberg lettuce, look,
I know that the nutritional value isn't as high as that, but
when you grow up iceberg in yourown garden, it's different than
what you're getting in the grocery store.
You're not blanching it as much as as you know, you get in the
(08:54):
grocery store. So it is getting more of that
light and there's more nutrientsinvolved.
So it's just, I love the texture, so and I have customers
who love the texture. So that's why I grow it.
And it does take longer because it's forming that tight head.
It's not sort of a loose head and it it tends to, you know,
really need those cooler conditions.
And I actually got it planted late, but it's still just this
(09:16):
past weekend I harvested it and it was just amazingly succulent.
So that did the job, but where Iwould change this for next
season would be I would space mybeds out or my trellises out
just a little bit more if I intend to continue putting the
tomatoes in in the same manner. Because even though the peas are
(09:40):
shading the lettuces nicely, it's having a sort of
detrimental effect with the tomatoes because those beds are
so closely together. The I anticipated that the
tomatoes would at least get that, you know, good morning,
sun. And then it would also, you
know, it'd be blocked for a little bit by the peas for the
afternoon. But, you know, those peas are
(10:01):
going to be done soon and they're going to get cut down.
And so that would give the full sun to those tomatoes.
The tomatoes are fine. They're not as big and robust as
I would hope they would be at this stage of the game, but they
still look very healthy. So I have probably two more
harvests. I've got one more harvest this
week and then I might eat one more harvest out of those sugar
(10:22):
snap peas next week. And then they're going to be
done for the season. So what I will do?
And all the the lettuces have already been harvested.
So those beds are empty with theexception of the tomatoes and
the peas. So now I'll go back through and
I will cut down those pea plantsand I will leave those roots in
the soil. This is going to fix all of that
nitrogen. Remember peas being legumes,
(10:43):
they fix their own nitrogen. So they're pulling that
atmospheric nitrogen in and theyare the the nodules in those
roots are turning that atmospheric nitrogen into a form
that the plant can use. If you cut the roots off of
those plants, well, now you're leaving those nodules in the
soil. And as they start to break down,
you are feeding that nitrogen back into that soil.
(11:05):
So that's going to benefit thosetomatoes.
And then of course, by the time I pull those down, then the sun,
they're going to have the full sun.
The tomatoes will get the full sun.
So they will, you know, start tothrive, I think at that point.
So I think it's a great pairing.It has worked fabulously well.
I really like the way that this worked out.
I just think that I would maybe space the trellises a little
(11:25):
further apart so that the tomatoes would get more of that
early sun or the more of that morning sun earlier in the
season before the tomato or the peas get, you know, cut down.
So, but All in all, absolutely something that I will do again
with just maybe a small tweak here and there.
The second in ground bed that I tried or new combination that I
(11:46):
tried was doing my bok choy withthe green onions like I normally
do, but then also pairing it with spinach.
So with all of these pairings, Iam sticking with my concept of
high, low, fast, slow, right? So we're pairing the tall
growing ones with the lower growing ones and the fast
(12:06):
maturing varieties with the slower maturing ones.
And that way nobody is competingand nobody's competing for
nutrients or sunlight or water. And again, this is all
experimental and every season isgoing to be a little bit
different. Sometimes, you know, the weather
conditions are going to be just right for one thing, but maybe
the other thing doesn't like it.And so this is going to very
(12:26):
from season to season, but in general, you can kind of use
that high, low, fast, slow rule to make some pairings in your
garden and allow things to complement each other while
taking up less space. The other option with this too
is that you're also choking out the weeds, right?
You're taking up all of that bedspace.
And so in combination with some mulch, you are also, you know,
(12:51):
just choking out anything. There's no room for anything
else to grow. OK, So if you've ever grown bok
choy before, you know, unless you are harvesting it as like a
baby bok choy where you just want the little ones.
If you're letting that get full size, they're big.
Like they are big and heavy and very, very thick at the base.
(13:11):
And I mean, we harvest some thatwere, you know, 4 lbs or more
and they have a very wide base to them.
So they a little bit of a room, they don't mind being next to
each other, but they need a little bit of room to leaf out
sort of in between those rows. I generally will plant green
onions down the center between the rows of the bok choy, but I
(13:35):
wanted to utilize that space just a little bit more this
year. And so I experimented with doing
a row of spinach. So it eventually ended up being
now this bed is what I call my barn bed.
And so this is in a, it's a 24 foot long space that is about 15
feet wide. It's up against the side of our
barn. And I sort of broke this down
(13:55):
into four individual beds with just little narrow walkways in
between. You almost couldn't really tell
that there was walkways. Everything was just straw mulch.
So I mean, the walkways were basically just wherever I
stepped. So I started with bok choy, then
a row of of green onions and then another, you know, set of
(14:16):
bok choy. And then I left a little bit
more space than what I normally would just to be able to put in
the spinach and then did anotherbok choy and green onions and
spinach. And I think I probably needed to
space the bok choy and the spinach a little bit further
(14:39):
apart than what I did because the bok choy grew tall fast
enough that I think it shaded out the spinach.
I also direct seeded the spinach, so the bok choy was put
in as transplants and so were the green onions.
And then I direct sowed the spinach seeds in in their row.
(15:03):
And I also think that I probablyplanted the spinach a little bit
too closely together. So I had kind of a double whammy
going there. I didn't thin out the spinach.
And so it was kind of competing with itself first space.
But then the bok choy got tall enough to where it was sort of
shading the spinach a little bitmore than I want it to.
I wanted that bok choy to be able to shade that spinach
(15:24):
because again, spinach is another one of those where it
doesn't really love the heat, and it will bolt fairly quickly
when it gets too hot. And I was trying to see if I
could prevent that. I think the spacing might have
been OK if I hadn't planted the spinach so closely together.
So will I do this one again nextyear?
Probably, but I might space the spinach just a little bit
(15:48):
further away from the bok choy. And then either make sure that I
go back and thin out that spinach ahead of time, which
let's be honest, I'm really bad about going back and doing, or
do the spinach as transplants, which I don't love because in my
experience, spinach just doesn'tlove being transplanted.
(16:09):
And again, transplanting is morework.
That also means more space for me starting my seeds.
So the third option there, I think, is for me to just be a
little bit more thoughtful abouthow I go through and plant that
spinach if I'm direct sowing it.And then I think that this will
work. I might also try to get the
spinach in just a little bit earlier than what I did.
I need to go back into my gardenjournal and see what date I
(16:32):
planted the spinach versus when I transplanted the bok choy and
the green onions and see if maybe I can push the envelope
just a little bit with those soil temperatures and get the
spinach in sooner so that it is larger by the time the bok choy
gets taller and starts shading it.
And I think that will probably work better.
So not a bad planting or not a bad pairing overall, just
(16:54):
something that probably also needs to be tweaked just a
little bit in order to repeat itagain next season.
As I have become a loving rose Bush Mama, I am determined to
make sure that my rose has lush foliage, vibrant blooms, and a
strong root system. This means understanding the
right fertilizer and proper feeding schedule.
(17:14):
So what I've learned from Heirloom Roses is that we should
not be feeding our first year rose plants with granulated
fertilizer, only liquid. And if we're growing roses in
containers like I am, we should only ever be using liquid
fertilizer. This is all so that we don't
scorch the roots of our rose plants.
The timing of these feedings is also important.
(17:37):
So during the active growing season, the spring and the
summer, we should begin fertilizing when we see 4 to 6
inches of new growth and a leaflet with five to seven
leaves. Again, use a liquid fertilizer
for every four to six weeks for our first year roses.
No granular fertilizer please. Now for fall we are trying to
prepare for winter so we should be switching to low nitrogen
(18:00):
fertilizers like bone meal or rock phosphate to strengthen the
roots for next seasons bloom. So we should stop fertilizing 6
to 8 weeks before our first frost to allow our roses to
enter dormancy naturally. Now if you planted in the fall
like me, you actually don't wantto fertilize until the spring
when your roses come out of dormancy.
(18:21):
Of course, I knew all of this assoon as I received my rose from
Heirloom Roses last fall becauseit came not only with a little
instruction booklet, but planting instructions printed
directly on the box so there wasno mistaking what to do for the
health and success of my new rose.
And you can always find pro tipsfor growing and feeding your
(18:41):
roses on the Heirloom Roses website.
You can save 20% off of your newrose purchases by going to
heirloomroses.com and using CodeJust Grow This Summer to plan
Your new roses for a fall planting, just like I did last
season. Choose the Rose that's best for
your zone and preferences by using their very robust search
(19:02):
function. And you can choose the date that
you want to receive your plants so you can time it for when it's
right for you. heirloomroses.comwith code Just Grow.
The link is in the show notes. OK, so those were the two in
ground beds. Now let's move on to the raised
planters. These are all planter box direct
planters with the exception of one that was actually a bed made
(19:24):
out of my grandkids old sandbox frame.
But they're all different dimensions too.
So I will give you the details on those as we go.
The reason I was initially a little cautious in the past with
pushing the limits in these raised beds was mostly due to
airflow reasons, but also nutrients.
(19:46):
So we know when we are putting plants very closely together,
there is kind of this tendency for the humidity to get trapped
in and around those plants, right?
And that of course can sometimeslead to fungal diseases.
And so we want to be very conscientious about how much air
flow we allow. The raised planters are all sort
of grouped together in my kitchen garden.
(20:09):
And the soil level in these raised planters is probably a
good. I don't know, 3 inches, maybe
some places as good as 4 inches below the lip of the beds.
These beds are 17 inches tall. And so I was a little concerned
about the airflow if the plants are too close together #1 the
base of those plants is being kind of blocked by the upper lip
(20:30):
of those raised beds. Which, you know, if I were to
add more soil or more compost inthere, then that would help to
take care of that a little bit. But also #2 they're all kind of
close together. And so I decided I needed to be
very strategic #1 about which plants I paired together.
Remember, high, low, fast, slow.And then once I made that
(20:52):
decision, I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of this
worked out very, very well. And I didn't have any fungal
diseases because again, I mentioned we had all of this
rain in the spring. And so even though it was even
more wet than what it normally would be in there and the
humidity was crazy high, I stilldid not see a bunch of foliar
(21:13):
diseases. So that is good to know.
The other thing that I'm concerned about again, I
mentioned was the nutrients. The the limited volume of soil
in a raised planter means that we have a limited number of
nutrients or amount of nutrientsavailable to those plants and
(21:34):
that could be depleted if we areplanting too intensively and we
are not doing something to manage that soil fertility.
So I was sure to make sure that I heavily amended with compost
like we generally do. I do this in the fall and then
maybe a little bit of a dusting on top in the spring just to
kind of again, add to that soil volume a little bit.
(21:55):
And then the plan is to also feed the soil again with liquid
amendments about halfway throughthe season and then maybe again
in the fall to compensate and make sure that these plants all
have plenty of nutrients available to them.
They don't deplete that soil during the growing season so
(22:18):
they can continue to thrive as we go through.
Because once again, as I'm goingto get into all of these beds,
not only were a part of an interplanting or an inter cropping in
the spring, but they also are getting a relay planting of
something else that is actually a summer crop at this point.
And some of them will continue to grow even at the same time
(22:40):
that summer crop is happening. OK, so let's dig into it.
The first set of them was now I mentioned I think at some point
that I was doing an experiment with growing mint in some of
these raised planters as a sort of permanent living mulch or you
(23:01):
know a permanent companion to whatever happens to go in there.
So this is my second season withthis and the first set of beds
that I have that mint in was planted to collards in the
spring and is now transitioning into cucumbers.
So these are two foot by 6 foot long beds and the mint was
(23:25):
already in there. Then I had planted that last
season. It came up to fill the bed this
season and I have been keeping it managed by keeping it trimmed
back. So I did chocolate mint,
thinking that the chocolate mintmaybe isn't quite as aggressive
as some of the other mints. Oh boy was I wrong.
They have just been thriving in these raised beds, which is
fine. That's what I wanted.
(23:47):
But I knew I also had to be strategic about what I would
plant in these beds if I'm goingto use mint as a permanent sort
of mulch. So I've made sure to keep it
back. I'm harvesting it constantly.
By the way, if you grow mint andyou don't immediately have like
a need for it, maybe you're not a fan of like, drying it into
tea. You just want it for fresh use
and you don't know what to do with all of this mint.
(24:08):
Chop it all up, let it dry and then use it as a mulch.
Throw it on top of your plants. I'm telling you it helps with
and that just actually could be any aromatic herb or any of your
plants. I mean, just literally chop it
up. And now with mint, you want to
make sure you really chop it up so it's not re rooting in your
planters, but just throw it in there and use it as a mulch.
I'm throwing it around my rose Bush.
(24:28):
I'm throwing in all my raised beds.
It's it makes an amazing mulch. It helps with the insects, I
think, because it's such a strong smell and it smells
fabulous when you're out there working in the plants.
So anyway, that aside, keeping the mint, you know, cut back, I
planted the collards and I'm trying to remember if I planted
those from seed or if I transplanted those.
(24:50):
I want to say I transplanted those because those are, they're
pretty evenly spaced out. So I'm going to bet that I
transplanted those into the mintand they have been doing
fabulously well. I mean, those collards have
grown and I have harvested week after week after week with those
collards. They are still growing strong
and as long as I keep that mint under control and cut back, it
(25:14):
doesn't seem to be impeding the growth of the collards at all.
That planting is transitioning into cucumbers.
So these beds run east to West, and so they get like the sun
most of the day. And I planted the collards on
the southern edge of those beds,and now I have cucumbers going
(25:38):
in in the northern end of those beds.
And so the idea is I'm also going to have a trellis that's
behind there. So the cucumbers can trellis up
and they can continue to trellisdown under the collards.
And we'll see how that goes. So this is a little bit of an
experiment that's ongoing to see#1 how long the collards will
(25:59):
continue to go because they did plant, I think they're called, I
think they're the Georgia Southern collards.
And they're supposed to be good,you know, going through the heat
and stuff. So I want to see how long I can
continue to harvest these collard greens throughout the
summer while that those cucumbers are growing now in the
same size beds. I have also done this with kale.
(26:24):
So there's 2. So there's five beds where I did
this with the collards. Now I've done the exact same
thing with kale. The mint was already there.
The kale got transplanted in, itis on the South end of the bed
and then the cucumbers are coming up in the North End of
the bed and they're going to go ahead and climb up the trellis.
And I have, I have a little bit more faith in the kale at this
(26:45):
point versus the collards only because the way that we harvest
our kale, and this is important to know because this is going to
go along with one of the other pairings that we did, is I
harvest the large outer leaves from the base of the plant and
leave the younger leaves in the center.
What happens is that kale continues to grow up.
And so as you're harvesting the large outer leaves, it starts to
(27:08):
look like a palm tree. You've got this nice thick stalk
that looks like a tree trunk andyou have the new growth coming
out the top. And so that leaves space around
the base of that kale for those cucumbers to kind of sprawl out
across the mint, over top of themint, underneath the kale in
addition to going up those trellises.
So again, this is another ongoing experiment in those same
(27:30):
size beds, 2 foot by 6 foot, andwe'll see how that goes.
The other three beds of the samesize also started with mint,
were interplanted with lettuce, head lettuce and green onions.
And so the head lettuces were, you know, done on both the north
side and the South side of the bed.
They took up the whole bed. The green onions were right down
(27:52):
the center. I will say on this one, the mint
was a little bit of an impedanceto the growth of the green
onions. If I didn't keep up on the mint,
if if I let that mint get any remotely tall, it will kind of
choke out those green onions. It didn't completely kill them
(28:14):
off. And I had, I mean, once I got
the the mint cut back again, they took off, you know, growing
just fine. And they did seem to help the,
the mint did seem to help keep the insects away from the
lettuces. Now, Full disclosure, I
absolutely was still using insect netting on all of these
crops. OK, so, you know, I'm, I'm not
(28:35):
skipping that. But you know, there's always
insects that get in underneath, especially if you have something
really tall like kale or collards that are pushing the
netting up and you don't get outthere and secure it back down
again properly. And there's always insects that
are going to get in there. I have had no issues with
insects in the collards or the kale and the lettuce.
(28:57):
I didn't have anything. The only thing that I had in the
lettuces was there were some pill bugs down in there, those
Roly polys that love that straw mulch and they like to get down
underneath there and once they're done eating their way
through the the compost, they sort of make their way towards
the lettuces. The one problem that I did have
was more due to the excessive weather or the excessive rain
(29:17):
that we have had and the amount of moisture that was sort of
trapped down in and around the straw mulch, which I had a
little too close to the base of those plants.
So until I realized what was going on, there was some rot
going on down in there because the bottom of that lettuce was
just constantly wet. So once I pulled the mulch away
that that solved that issue. But again, those beds, now the
(29:40):
lettuce is all out of there. The green onions are done and
out of there. So the only thing that's in
there at this point is the mint and the beginning of those
cucumbers. I will say with these 10 beds,
the collards, the kale and the lettuce with the mint going into
the cucumbers, I started the cucumbers by direct sowing them
in those beds. I believe that I would be better
(30:05):
off starting these from seeds separately and transplanting
them into these beds mainly because of the mint.
I'm still, I'm still convinced that the mint is actually a good
thing. It really does seem to be
helping. I have barely any weed pressure
in there and there's not a ton of mulch because the mint kind
(30:27):
of took up that space. So there's not a ton of straw in
any of those beds with the exception of the lettuce beds
that interestingly enough, the mint hadn't come back as strong
yet when I planted those. And there is some, you know,
some straw in around the collarsand the kale, but not nearly as
much as you would think. The mint is doing its job, but I
think the the mint can be aggressive obviously, and if
(30:50):
you're not real good at keeping up on keeping it trimmed back,
it can very easily choke some things out.
I also had some deer come in andsort of nose, you know, the the
insect nutting out of the way and get in there and munch on a
couple of the cucumber plants. And I think if they had been a
little bit bigger, that would have been less of an issue.
(31:10):
So I'm replanting some of them because they did either got
predated on or they just didn't do as well because they didn't
get enough sun or there wasn't enough room or whatever.
I think. So I think in this planting I
will probably do this again depending on how those cucumbers
do later on in the season. But I think the next time I may
(31:32):
transplant those cucumber plantsin there rather than direct
sowing them into the beds. I usually prefer the direct sow
method just because I feel like the cucumbers get a better
start. They are more adapted to their
environments more quickly and cucumbers don't love being
transplanted. You can transplant them, but
(31:52):
they just seem to do better and be more robust for me in my
climate in my environment by direct sowing.
So that's why I direct sowed them.
I think next time though, if I were to do them into the mint
like this, I would absolutely dothem ahead of time and then just
transplant them. If you've been watching the
whole tariff situation here in the US with the on again off
(32:13):
again this month, it's 110%. Oh, this month we reduced it to
30% and on and on. You likely have decided against
making any major purchases that might involve something being
shipped in from overseas. I know I have, but I also need
to continue expanding my garden and replacing my worn out old
wooden garden beds. The good news is the raised
(32:33):
garden beds from Planter Box Direct are made in the US by AUS
company from US Steel. These are not beds being shipped
in from overseas that are going to be subject to some crazy mark
UPS no matter when you order them.
They're super durable, they comein a ton of different colors and
styles, and these are the beds that I'm getting crazy high
yields out of this year. Get your own beautiful,
(32:56):
functional and durable raised garden beds by going to
planterboxdirect.com and using code Just Grow 10 to not only
save 10% but get free shipping. So not only do you not have to
contend with tariffs, you don't have to pay anything to ship
these steel beds to your door. Planter box direct.com with code
Just grow 10 to save 10% and getfree shipping on my favorite
(33:19):
raised garden planters. The link is in the show notes.
So the next raised bed pairing that I experimented this year
has absolutely knocked it out ofthe park.
This has been way better than I ever could have anticipated and
it's still going. It's still going to be an
experiment. And this was beets and Kale into
(33:43):
cucumbers. So I have two, I have three beds
of this two of them are 5 foot by 5 foot.
So one of them is a planter box direct bed.
The other one is that, you know,leftover sandbox configuration
from my grandkids. And then one of them is a three
foot by 4 foot bed. And I started by direct sewing
the beets as soon as the soil was warm enough and got them in
(34:04):
their little rows within that bed, allowed the beets to come
up and get themselves established.
And then I transplanted kale plants in between those little
rows. The idea being like we just
talked about with kale, as it's growing taller, I could be
harvesting out from underneath. That would still give the beets
(34:25):
plenty of space to be able to grow and get leafy and big
without impeding the growth, without cutting off, you know,
the, the light that it was supposed to get.
And then I could, you know, harvest the beets from out in
between that kale and allow thatkale to continue to grow because
just like in those other 10 beds, this bed is also
(34:46):
transitioning into cucumbers. So I have cucumbers that have
been planted, again, directly sown from seed on the north side
of those three beds, and there will be a trellis that goes up
there. So the cucumbers should be able
to climb up that trellis and then also spread themselves out
across that bed in and underneath the kale.
(35:07):
And so the hope here is that thekale can continue to grow
without being impeded by the cucumbers, and that maybe the
cucumbers will help to cover that soil where the kale is.
Even though there's straw down there there, I think that extra
layer might help to keep that soil a little bit cooler in the
summertime and allow that kale to continue to grow.
(35:30):
So we'll see how this works. But so far, the kale with the
beets has worked out phenomenally well.
I have harvested so much kale out of these beds.
It's still coming on. I have kale coming out my ears.
The beets have done phenomenallywell.
We all know, you know, beets canbe a little tricky sometimes
(35:52):
because unless you're buying a mono germ seed, beets have three
plant embryos per seed cluster. So if you're not real careful
about how you plant those beets and how you space out those
seeds, you're going to end up with a ton of beets in a row.
Now if you have the wherewithal to go back and send those beets
out, then you can solve that problem.
(36:14):
If you don't like me because I have too many things going on
and I know what I've gotten myself into, you don't go back
and you thin your beats. You thin your beats as baby
beats. And so as those beats start to
mature, I will go through and I will pull them as they get large
enough to use and allow the remaining ones to stay in the
ground and continue to grow. Now, I try to be conscientious
(36:34):
about how I'm spacing those out when I plant, but sometimes they
get a little crowded. Hasn't mattered this year.
Those beats have all done phenomenally well, with the
exception of the deer coming through and once again putting
their noses up underneath the insect netting and literally not
just eating the tops off of the beets, but yanking them out and
dropping them on the ground outside of the bed when they
(36:56):
were done with the greens and just leaving the roots there.
So I had a little bunch of little baby beets that I got to
eat for myself because nobody else likes the beets.
And other than that, the beets have done really, really well
and the kale is continuing to dophenomenally well.
So this is absolutely a pairing that I will do from here on out.
(37:17):
Whether or not the cucumbers workout remains to be seen.
I'll give you guys an update probably, you know, towards the
end of the summer about how wellthat is working.
But I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I am, I am cautiously optimisticthat that is going to work very
well. Now, one that didn't quite work
as well as I would hope, but that I will repeat with some
(37:39):
tweaking, is in two more beds inthe kitchen garden.
Again, these are 4 foot by 5 foot.
And this was kohlrabi with beets.
This one didn't work quite as well, but it has redeemed
itself. So I think I underestimated how
quickly the kohlrabi was going to grow.
(38:00):
So just like the kale with the beets, I planted the beet seeds
1st and allowed them to come up and be established.
And I kind of planted them in little rows in that 4 by 5 bed
and then on the outer rows and then in between the inner rows I
transplanted the kohlrabi. Well, if you've ever grown
kohlrabi, you know, it gets kindof leafy on the top.
(38:23):
If you're not familiar with whatkohlrabi is, it's in the cabbage
family. It forms an above ground sort of
bulb that has these giant leavesthat come up from it.
You'll have to go and look at a picture.
A picture? What was the name of that
cartoon character? Mike from Monsters Inc.
(38:46):
The little green dude. Yeah.
That reminds me of kohlrabi withsome eyeballs, but go look it up
and you'll see it's a very interesting looking vegetable.
They're fabulous. It tastes great, but they get
really big and leafy and those those leaves get kind of tall.
I underestimated how quickly that kohlrabi was going to grow
with those beets. And by the time it was time to
(39:08):
harvest the kohlrabi, now kohlrabi is kind of is A1 and
done and the spacing is a littlebit more specific than you know,
say the beets would be so very easy to know exactly how many I
was going to harvest. They all pretty much get
harvested at once, maybe over the course of two weeks or two
harvests if you have some smaller ones that need to catch
up. But I harvested all of mine all
at once. And what I found was by the time
(39:31):
the kohlrabi was ready to come out of that bed, the beets had
been stunted. The beets, the greens weren't
nearly as big as the beets and the other beds right next to
these that were with the kale. I mean, like to the point where
I don't even think they had really started to form their
their roots yet versus the ones in the next bed that were
(39:52):
clearly already forming their roots as I started to harvest
the kales. But now the kohlrabi has been
out for several weeks and those beets have bounced back and they
are thriving and they are forming their roots with no
problem. So I think what I would do would
be to, I don't know, I might plant the see if I can plant the
(40:13):
beets. Earlier Or I may just not plant
the kohlrabi on the outside edges of the beats and that way
there would be more sun available to those beats that
were sort of in the center. So this would cut down on the
amount of kohlrabi that I would be able to grow in that same
space, but the beets would do better.
(40:37):
Or I could wait until the beets get a little bit older and a
little bit more established before I plant the kohlrabi.
And so that might work just as well.
But the beets don't seem to be any worse for the wear at this
stage of the game. In fact, now it has made it to
where I sort of have a succession of beets.
So all of the beets that are planted with the kale are all
actively being harvested right now, and I'll harvest those over
(40:58):
several weeks as they get largerand larger.
Meanwhile, these guys over here are kind of playing catch up and
so they'll be ready to harvest by the time I finally harvest
the beets out of those other three beds.
So in that way, that delayed maturity is actually helping get
me a better succession. And just like with all of these
other beds, the kohlrabi bed is also a kohlrabi and beet bed is
(41:20):
also getting cucumbers. Now the difference with this is
those cucumbers are going to have those entire beds to
themselves because the Kohlrabi's already out.
The beats will eventually all beout as well.
And those cucumbers are coming up now, so they will have the
entire bed to themselves for theentire summer.
So I'll be interested to see what the yield difference will
(41:43):
be in the beds where the cucumbers have the entire bed to
themselves and the beds where they have to share the space
with the kale or the collards. So I'm going to definitely going
to be taking notes in my garden journal and I will be reporting
back to you guys probably closertowards the summer end of the
summer. And then there's one sort of
(42:06):
honorable mention that is being done in a couple of older, you
know, wooden beds that definitely need to be replaced
because they're falling apart atthis point.
They are like 3 foot by 4 foot. And there are two of these beds.
And I did green beans with dill.Now these beds are along one
(42:30):
side of my driveway. So what I did was I direct sewed
the dill in sort of AU shape, soalong three sides of those beds
and left the front side open foraccess.
And then I planted in the middleBush green beans.
And I was hoping that the dill would help with some of the
(42:52):
insect predation because in addition to having to use the
insect netting to cover to protect from the deer and from
the Bunny rabbits, the grasshoppers love to eat the
leaves of our green beans. And a lot of the time it will
absolutely affect the yield. And like I said, even if you put
those green, the, the insect netting over top of those beans,
(43:15):
at some point they're pushing upon that netting and there are
access points for those insects to get in.
So unless I were to do hoops over the top of them and then
stake it all down, which I don'thave enough hoops and stuff for
all these different beds to be able to do that.
The only other option was to maybe find something that I
could interplant. Let me tell you, I have been
(43:36):
harvesting that dill. It's, it's got nice and big.
I have taken a couple of harvests off of it.
It's bouncing back and growing some more, which has been
fabulous. It smells amazing and the green
beans are super healthy. There hasn't been any insect
predation on any of them. They're all flowering and loaded
with itty bitty tiny little beans right now.
So I'm hoping by next week I will actually get my first green
(43:57):
bean harvest out of all of theselittle Bush beans.
And so is that one that I think worked?
Yeah, absolutely. Will I do it again?
Yeah, I probably will. And if not with dill, then I
might do it with another very strong scented herb that would
do sort of the same thing. The interesting thing is I
haven't had anything going afterthe dill either.
I would have assumed that I would have seen black
(44:18):
swallowtail caterpillars eating on it, because that's one of
their favorite things. And I haven't seen any of that.
Not on my dill or on my parsley,which happens to be around my
Shard, one of my beds of Shard, too.
So I don't know what's going on with the insects this year, but
I'm not going to complain. I can, you know, this could be
(44:39):
causation, it could be correlation, right?
We, we never know unless we do these things over and over again
and let me go look and do a controlled trial and all these
kinds of things. We're never going to know for
sure if what we're doing to keepinsects away is working because
of what we're doing or if there was some other reason for this
to happen. It could very well be there was
just so much rain that the insects haven't been able to do
(45:01):
what they normally do. And once Mother Nature turns the
faucet off, we might be inundated.
Who knows? But if it seems like it works,
then I'm going to do it again, regardless of whether or not I
have actual definitive proof. You know, if it, if it doesn't,
if it ain't broke, don't fix it,right?
But it also encourages me to continue trying new
(45:21):
combinations. So I hope this episode gave you
the inspiration to try new combinations in your garden
beds. And you can do this in the fall
garden too. So you know, you don't have to
wait until next spring to maybe give some of these combinations
a try. You can do this for fall.
Now is the time to start planning for a fall garden.
Just remember to pair high, low,fast, slow, right when you think
(45:44):
about the mature size of the plant and how long it's going to
be in that garden bed during theseason.
And don't be afraid to thin someplants out if you need to to
benefit the other ones if you see some stunted growth.
Experimentation always leads to education, whether it's a full
(46:05):
success, a moderate one, or evena total failure, Right?
That is how we get better. Until next time, my gardening
friends, keep on cultivating that dream garden, and we'll
talk again soon.
I always encourage experimentingwith new techniques in the
garden, which is why I talk so often about inter planting and
companion planting. These techniques are not as well
known to a lot of gardeners, andit can take some time to break
out of the habit of having everything planted in nice neat
rows by themselves and move intocloser spacing and even very
(00:24):
intensive plantings. My experience this spring
involved a lot of very close butstrategic pairings in my raised
planters, and I have my usual combinations both in my planters
and in my in ground beds, like planting lettuce and green
onions and sweet alyssum in and amongst my cabbage and my
broccoli and my cauliflower, forexample.
That's something that I do everyyear, but I've usually been a
(00:47):
little bit more cautious with the spacing in my raised beds
for a number of reasons, and I'll talk about those
considerations in the episode today.
I did try a couple of new combinations in some of my in
ground beds this spring, but I really went for it this year in
terms of pushing the limits of what I can grow in a very
(01:07):
concentrated space in my raised beds.
And let me tell you, the resultshave been kind of astonishing.
Some of them have really knockedit out of the park.
Some of them could use some tweaking and there are one or
two that I will change up a little bit, but that will
absolutely be repeated now everysingle year.
So today on Just Grow Something,I will reveal to you 8 new ways
(01:31):
that I interplanted crops in my garden beds, how I did it, how
well they worked and what I'll change for next season.
Hopefully you will be inspired to really push the envelope in
your garden spaces too, so that you can end up with fewer weeds,
a higher yield, and more bang for your gardening buck.
Let's dig in. Hey, I'm Karen and what started
(01:53):
as a small backyard garden 20 years ago turned into a lifelong
passion for growing food. Now as a market farmer and
horticulturist, I want to help you do the same.
On this podcast, I am your friend in the garden, teaching
evidence based techniques to help you grow your favorites and
build confidence in your own garden space.
So grab your garden journal and a cup of coffee and get ready to
(02:13):
just grow something. So before we jump into spring
interplanting, I have to share this with you, one of my mentees
with the Beginning Farmer Rancher Grant program.
Rachel asked me a question at the farmers last weekend that I
absolutely loved, and now I haveto ask you the same question.
(02:35):
So she said that she'd been listening to the podcast and she
mentioned that she noticed that a lot of the time I sort of give
the different vegetables their own personas.
So for instance, I always say, you know, carrots are Divas.
And here is why I think carrots are Divas kind of a thing.
So she said this got her to thinking and she asked me, what
(02:56):
vegetable are you? I thought this was brilliant.
I thought this was so fun. So I took some time to think and
I decided I am okra now. Stick with me here, OK?
Okra, right can be planted just about anywhere.
It's not super picky about putting their roots down, even
in less than ideal soil conditions.
(03:18):
It can be very pretty if it wants to be, but that's not its
main purpose, not the main reason behind why we grow okra.
Too much exposure to okra can sometimes lead to irritation in
some people. Other people can handle it just
fine. It does just fine being totally
(03:39):
neglected, but give it just a little bit of attention and it
can really take off. And then once okra gets going,
it just keeps on going and going, like kind of like the
Energizer Bunny all season long until a hard freeze finally
takes it down. I am okra.
I think all of these things pertain to my personality and
(04:03):
how I do things. So now it's your turn.
So Rachel and her husband Michael both shared with me what
their vegetable personas are andthey both made total sense once
they explained the characteristics, which was just
super fun. So I want to know yours.
If you're listening in Spotify or on YouTube, just drop your
comment below. You can reply to this morning's
(04:25):
e-mail if you're on the e-mail list or you can send me Adm on
social. I want to hear what vegetable
you are. I mean, I'll accept a fruit too,
OK, If that's that's more appropriate for you, that's
fine. So what vegetable or fruit
defines you and why? OK, let me know.
I cannot wait to read these. OK, so spring inter plantings,
(04:51):
what worked great for me, what needs to be tweaked?
And is there anything that I'm just not going to repeat?
Let's start with the in ground beds.
And as I go through this, I willkind of give you the details on
the sizes of the beds. And then once we move into the
planters, I'll give you the direction or the the dimensions
on those with the in ground beds.
(05:11):
I did sort of two new combinations.
The first one was to start with planting lettuces with sugar
snap peas and then into tomatoes.
So not only are we doing intercroppings with some of
these, some of them are also inter plantings into succession
plantings or into relay plantings, right.
(05:34):
So this first bed area is reallya 30 foot long by I think 25 to
30 foot wide sort of square space.
And So what I did was I took that 30 foot long bed and I
broke it down into rows or beds that were 5 foot wide.
(05:54):
And then we put up cattle panel for trellises.
So we're running north to South and the panels are on the West
side of those beds. So obviously our sun is going
east to West, right? So I planted the sugar snap peas
on the West side of those panelsand then I planted my lettuces
in those beds on the other side of those panels.
(06:17):
And so the idea with this was that the sugar snap peas would
grow up the trellises. And as it got later in the
season and it started to get warmer as the sun would go down
on the West side of those beds, that the sugar snap peas could
shade the lettuces. So those peas weren't going to
(06:38):
get so tall early enough that itwould impede the growth of those
lettuces. But the hope was that once we
started to get really hot, at least it would provide some
afternoon shade. And that would extend the
lifespan of those lettuces beingharvested out of those beds once
the soil warmed up. Because obviously these are two
(07:00):
cool weather crops, right? The lettuces and the peas.
But I needed to utilize that bedfor the entire season.
So I started planting my tomatoes and I did this on along
the trellis, but on the other side from where the peas are.
So if the trellis is running north to South and it's on the
West side of the bed, the peas were on the West side of the
(07:22):
trellis and the tomatoes are on the east side.
So they're still up against the trellis and the tomatoes are the
the lettuces are still in the beds, but the tomatoes are going
in against the trellis as I'm pulling those lettuces out.
So I would harvest the lettuce that was closest to the trellis
first as I was interplanting those tomatoes.
I will say the effect of having the peas shade the lettuce has
(07:48):
worked be beautifully. Normally, you know, this has
been a very wet spring for us. And as a result that has kind of
kept the temperatures cool and that intermittent rain has
helped to keep the root zones cool on a lot of these plants.
Plus, of course, as usual, I am I'm using heavy layers of straw
mulch too, so that's also keeping them cool.
(08:09):
But I will say that that afternoon shade for those
lettuces has done wonders for extending the season.
Normally, you know, by the firstweek in June, the lettuces have
turned bitter because it's just gotten too hot.
But I harvested some beautiful iceberg lettuce out of those
(08:33):
beds that was not bitter in any way, shape or form.
It was just succulent and crunchy and amazing.
And before you come at me about it being iceberg lettuce, look,
I know that the nutritional value isn't as high as that, but
when you grow up iceberg in yourown garden, it's different than
what you're getting in the grocery store.
You're not blanching it as much as as you know, you get in the
(08:54):
grocery store. So it is getting more of that
light and there's more nutrientsinvolved.
So it's just, I love the texture, so and I have customers
who love the texture. So that's why I grow it.
And it does take longer because it's forming that tight head.
It's not sort of a loose head and it it tends to, you know,
really need those cooler conditions.
And I actually got it planted late, but it's still just this
(09:16):
past weekend I harvested it and it was just amazingly succulent.
So that did the job, but where Iwould change this for next
season would be I would space mybeds out or my trellises out
just a little bit more if I intend to continue putting the
tomatoes in in the same manner. Because even though the peas are
(09:40):
shading the lettuces nicely, it's having a sort of
detrimental effect with the tomatoes because those beds are
so closely together. The I anticipated that the
tomatoes would at least get that, you know, good morning,
sun. And then it would also, you
know, it'd be blocked for a little bit by the peas for the
afternoon. But, you know, those peas are
(10:01):
going to be done soon and they're going to get cut down.
And so that would give the full sun to those tomatoes.
The tomatoes are fine. They're not as big and robust as
I would hope they would be at this stage of the game, but they
still look very healthy. So I have probably two more
harvests. I've got one more harvest this
week and then I might eat one more harvest out of those sugar
(10:22):
snap peas next week. And then they're going to be
done for the season. So what I will do?
And all the the lettuces have already been harvested.
So those beds are empty with theexception of the tomatoes and
the peas. So now I'll go back through and
I will cut down those pea plantsand I will leave those roots in
the soil. This is going to fix all of that
nitrogen. Remember peas being legumes,
(10:43):
they fix their own nitrogen. So they're pulling that
atmospheric nitrogen in and theyare the the nodules in those
roots are turning that atmospheric nitrogen into a form
that the plant can use. If you cut the roots off of
those plants, well, now you're leaving those nodules in the
soil. And as they start to break down,
you are feeding that nitrogen back into that soil.
(11:05):
So that's going to benefit thosetomatoes.
And then of course, by the time I pull those down, then the sun,
they're going to have the full sun.
The tomatoes will get the full sun.
So they will, you know, start tothrive, I think at that point.
So I think it's a great pairing.It has worked fabulously well.
I really like the way that this worked out.
I just think that I would maybe space the trellises a little
(11:25):
further apart so that the tomatoes would get more of that
early sun or the more of that morning sun earlier in the
season before the tomato or the peas get, you know, cut down.
So, but All in all, absolutely something that I will do again
with just maybe a small tweak here and there.
The second in ground bed that I tried or new combination that I
(11:46):
tried was doing my bok choy withthe green onions like I normally
do, but then also pairing it with spinach.
So with all of these pairings, Iam sticking with my concept of
high, low, fast, slow, right? So we're pairing the tall
growing ones with the lower growing ones and the fast
(12:06):
maturing varieties with the slower maturing ones.
And that way nobody is competingand nobody's competing for
nutrients or sunlight or water. And again, this is all
experimental and every season isgoing to be a little bit
different. Sometimes, you know, the weather
conditions are going to be just right for one thing, but maybe
the other thing doesn't like it.And so this is going to very
(12:26):
from season to season, but in general, you can kind of use
that high, low, fast, slow rule to make some pairings in your
garden and allow things to complement each other while
taking up less space. The other option with this too
is that you're also choking out the weeds, right?
You're taking up all of that bedspace.
And so in combination with some mulch, you are also, you know,
(12:51):
just choking out anything. There's no room for anything
else to grow. OK, So if you've ever grown bok
choy before, you know, unless you are harvesting it as like a
baby bok choy where you just want the little ones.
If you're letting that get full size, they're big.
Like they are big and heavy and very, very thick at the base.
(13:11):
And I mean, we harvest some thatwere, you know, 4 lbs or more
and they have a very wide base to them.
So they a little bit of a room, they don't mind being next to
each other, but they need a little bit of room to leaf out
sort of in between those rows. I generally will plant green
onions down the center between the rows of the bok choy, but I
(13:35):
wanted to utilize that space just a little bit more this
year. And so I experimented with doing
a row of spinach. So it eventually ended up being
now this bed is what I call my barn bed.
And so this is in a, it's a 24 foot long space that is about 15
feet wide. It's up against the side of our
barn. And I sort of broke this down
(13:55):
into four individual beds with just little narrow walkways in
between. You almost couldn't really tell
that there was walkways. Everything was just straw mulch.
So I mean, the walkways were basically just wherever I
stepped. So I started with bok choy, then
a row of of green onions and then another, you know, set of
(14:16):
bok choy. And then I left a little bit
more space than what I normally would just to be able to put in
the spinach and then did anotherbok choy and green onions and
spinach. And I think I probably needed to
space the bok choy and the spinach a little bit further
(14:39):
apart than what I did because the bok choy grew tall fast
enough that I think it shaded out the spinach.
I also direct seeded the spinach, so the bok choy was put
in as transplants and so were the green onions.
And then I direct sowed the spinach seeds in in their row.
(15:03):
And I also think that I probablyplanted the spinach a little bit
too closely together. So I had kind of a double whammy
going there. I didn't thin out the spinach.
And so it was kind of competing with itself first space.
But then the bok choy got tall enough to where it was sort of
shading the spinach a little bitmore than I want it to.
I wanted that bok choy to be able to shade that spinach
(15:24):
because again, spinach is another one of those where it
doesn't really love the heat, and it will bolt fairly quickly
when it gets too hot. And I was trying to see if I
could prevent that. I think the spacing might have
been OK if I hadn't planted the spinach so closely together.
So will I do this one again nextyear?
Probably, but I might space the spinach just a little bit
(15:48):
further away from the bok choy. And then either make sure that I
go back and thin out that spinach ahead of time, which
let's be honest, I'm really bad about going back and doing, or
do the spinach as transplants, which I don't love because in my
experience, spinach just doesn'tlove being transplanted.
(16:09):
And again, transplanting is morework.
That also means more space for me starting my seeds.
So the third option there, I think, is for me to just be a
little bit more thoughtful abouthow I go through and plant that
spinach if I'm direct sowing it.And then I think that this will
work. I might also try to get the
spinach in just a little bit earlier than what I did.
I need to go back into my gardenjournal and see what date I
(16:32):
planted the spinach versus when I transplanted the bok choy and
the green onions and see if maybe I can push the envelope
just a little bit with those soil temperatures and get the
spinach in sooner so that it is larger by the time the bok choy
gets taller and starts shading it.
And I think that will probably work better.
So not a bad planting or not a bad pairing overall, just
(16:54):
something that probably also needs to be tweaked just a
little bit in order to repeat itagain next season.
As I have become a loving rose Bush Mama, I am determined to
make sure that my rose has lush foliage, vibrant blooms, and a
strong root system. This means understanding the
right fertilizer and proper feeding schedule.
(17:14):
So what I've learned from Heirloom Roses is that we should
not be feeding our first year rose plants with granulated
fertilizer, only liquid. And if we're growing roses in
containers like I am, we should only ever be using liquid
fertilizer. This is all so that we don't
scorch the roots of our rose plants.
The timing of these feedings is also important.
(17:37):
So during the active growing season, the spring and the
summer, we should begin fertilizing when we see 4 to 6
inches of new growth and a leaflet with five to seven
leaves. Again, use a liquid fertilizer
for every four to six weeks for our first year roses.
No granular fertilizer please. Now for fall we are trying to
prepare for winter so we should be switching to low nitrogen
(18:00):
fertilizers like bone meal or rock phosphate to strengthen the
roots for next seasons bloom. So we should stop fertilizing 6
to 8 weeks before our first frost to allow our roses to
enter dormancy naturally. Now if you planted in the fall
like me, you actually don't wantto fertilize until the spring
when your roses come out of dormancy.
(18:21):
Of course, I knew all of this assoon as I received my rose from
Heirloom Roses last fall becauseit came not only with a little
instruction booklet, but planting instructions printed
directly on the box so there wasno mistaking what to do for the
health and success of my new rose.
And you can always find pro tipsfor growing and feeding your
(18:41):
roses on the Heirloom Roses website.
You can save 20% off of your newrose purchases by going to
heirloomroses.com and using CodeJust Grow This Summer to plan
Your new roses for a fall planting, just like I did last
season. Choose the Rose that's best for
your zone and preferences by using their very robust search
(19:02):
function. And you can choose the date that
you want to receive your plants so you can time it for when it's
right for you. heirloomroses.comwith code Just Grow.
The link is in the show notes. OK, so those were the two in
ground beds. Now let's move on to the raised
planters. These are all planter box direct
planters with the exception of one that was actually a bed made
(19:24):
out of my grandkids old sandbox frame.
But they're all different dimensions too.
So I will give you the details on those as we go.
The reason I was initially a little cautious in the past with
pushing the limits in these raised beds was mostly due to
airflow reasons, but also nutrients.
(19:46):
So we know when we are putting plants very closely together,
there is kind of this tendency for the humidity to get trapped
in and around those plants, right?
And that of course can sometimeslead to fungal diseases.
And so we want to be very conscientious about how much air
flow we allow. The raised planters are all sort
of grouped together in my kitchen garden.
(20:09):
And the soil level in these raised planters is probably a
good. I don't know, 3 inches, maybe
some places as good as 4 inches below the lip of the beds.
These beds are 17 inches tall. And so I was a little concerned
about the airflow if the plants are too close together #1 the
base of those plants is being kind of blocked by the upper lip
(20:30):
of those raised beds. Which, you know, if I were to
add more soil or more compost inthere, then that would help to
take care of that a little bit. But also #2 they're all kind of
close together. And so I decided I needed to be
very strategic #1 about which plants I paired together.
Remember, high, low, fast, slow.And then once I made that
(20:52):
decision, I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of this
worked out very, very well. And I didn't have any fungal
diseases because again, I mentioned we had all of this
rain in the spring. And so even though it was even
more wet than what it normally would be in there and the
humidity was crazy high, I stilldid not see a bunch of foliar
(21:13):
diseases. So that is good to know.
The other thing that I'm concerned about again, I
mentioned was the nutrients. The the limited volume of soil
in a raised planter means that we have a limited number of
nutrients or amount of nutrientsavailable to those plants and
(21:34):
that could be depleted if we areplanting too intensively and we
are not doing something to manage that soil fertility.
So I was sure to make sure that I heavily amended with compost
like we generally do. I do this in the fall and then
maybe a little bit of a dusting on top in the spring just to
kind of again, add to that soil volume a little bit.
(21:55):
And then the plan is to also feed the soil again with liquid
amendments about halfway throughthe season and then maybe again
in the fall to compensate and make sure that these plants all
have plenty of nutrients available to them.
They don't deplete that soil during the growing season so
(22:18):
they can continue to thrive as we go through.
Because once again, as I'm goingto get into all of these beds,
not only were a part of an interplanting or an inter cropping in
the spring, but they also are getting a relay planting of
something else that is actually a summer crop at this point.
And some of them will continue to grow even at the same time
(22:40):
that summer crop is happening. OK, so let's dig into it.
The first set of them was now I mentioned I think at some point
that I was doing an experiment with growing mint in some of
these raised planters as a sort of permanent living mulch or you
(23:01):
know a permanent companion to whatever happens to go in there.
So this is my second season withthis and the first set of beds
that I have that mint in was planted to collards in the
spring and is now transitioning into cucumbers.
So these are two foot by 6 foot long beds and the mint was
(23:25):
already in there. Then I had planted that last
season. It came up to fill the bed this
season and I have been keeping it managed by keeping it trimmed
back. So I did chocolate mint,
thinking that the chocolate mintmaybe isn't quite as aggressive
as some of the other mints. Oh boy was I wrong.
They have just been thriving in these raised beds, which is
fine. That's what I wanted.
(23:47):
But I knew I also had to be strategic about what I would
plant in these beds if I'm goingto use mint as a permanent sort
of mulch. So I've made sure to keep it
back. I'm harvesting it constantly.
By the way, if you grow mint andyou don't immediately have like
a need for it, maybe you're not a fan of like, drying it into
tea. You just want it for fresh use
and you don't know what to do with all of this mint.
(24:08):
Chop it all up, let it dry and then use it as a mulch.
Throw it on top of your plants. I'm telling you it helps with
and that just actually could be any aromatic herb or any of your
plants. I mean, just literally chop it
up. And now with mint, you want to
make sure you really chop it up so it's not re rooting in your
planters, but just throw it in there and use it as a mulch.
I'm throwing it around my rose Bush.
(24:28):
I'm throwing in all my raised beds.
It's it makes an amazing mulch. It helps with the insects, I
think, because it's such a strong smell and it smells
fabulous when you're out there working in the plants.
So anyway, that aside, keeping the mint, you know, cut back, I
planted the collards and I'm trying to remember if I planted
those from seed or if I transplanted those.
(24:50):
I want to say I transplanted those because those are, they're
pretty evenly spaced out. So I'm going to bet that I
transplanted those into the mintand they have been doing
fabulously well. I mean, those collards have
grown and I have harvested week after week after week with those
collards. They are still growing strong
and as long as I keep that mint under control and cut back, it
(25:14):
doesn't seem to be impeding the growth of the collards at all.
That planting is transitioning into cucumbers.
So these beds run east to West, and so they get like the sun
most of the day. And I planted the collards on
the southern edge of those beds,and now I have cucumbers going
(25:38):
in in the northern end of those beds.
And so the idea is I'm also going to have a trellis that's
behind there. So the cucumbers can trellis up
and they can continue to trellisdown under the collards.
And we'll see how that goes. So this is a little bit of an
experiment that's ongoing to see#1 how long the collards will
(25:59):
continue to go because they did plant, I think they're called, I
think they're the Georgia Southern collards.
And they're supposed to be good,you know, going through the heat
and stuff. So I want to see how long I can
continue to harvest these collard greens throughout the
summer while that those cucumbers are growing now in the
same size beds. I have also done this with kale.
(26:24):
So there's 2. So there's five beds where I did
this with the collards. Now I've done the exact same
thing with kale. The mint was already there.
The kale got transplanted in, itis on the South end of the bed
and then the cucumbers are coming up in the North End of
the bed and they're going to go ahead and climb up the trellis.
And I have, I have a little bit more faith in the kale at this
(26:45):
point versus the collards only because the way that we harvest
our kale, and this is important to know because this is going to
go along with one of the other pairings that we did, is I
harvest the large outer leaves from the base of the plant and
leave the younger leaves in the center.
What happens is that kale continues to grow up.
And so as you're harvesting the large outer leaves, it starts to
(27:08):
look like a palm tree. You've got this nice thick stalk
that looks like a tree trunk andyou have the new growth coming
out the top. And so that leaves space around
the base of that kale for those cucumbers to kind of sprawl out
across the mint, over top of themint, underneath the kale in
addition to going up those trellises.
So again, this is another ongoing experiment in those same
(27:30):
size beds, 2 foot by 6 foot, andwe'll see how that goes.
The other three beds of the samesize also started with mint,
were interplanted with lettuce, head lettuce and green onions.
And so the head lettuces were, you know, done on both the north
side and the South side of the bed.
They took up the whole bed. The green onions were right down
(27:52):
the center. I will say on this one, the mint
was a little bit of an impedanceto the growth of the green
onions. If I didn't keep up on the mint,
if if I let that mint get any remotely tall, it will kind of
choke out those green onions. It didn't completely kill them
(28:14):
off. And I had, I mean, once I got
the the mint cut back again, they took off, you know, growing
just fine. And they did seem to help the,
the mint did seem to help keep the insects away from the
lettuces. Now, Full disclosure, I
absolutely was still using insect netting on all of these
crops. OK, so, you know, I'm, I'm not
(28:35):
skipping that. But you know, there's always
insects that get in underneath, especially if you have something
really tall like kale or collards that are pushing the
netting up and you don't get outthere and secure it back down
again properly. And there's always insects that
are going to get in there. I have had no issues with
insects in the collards or the kale and the lettuce.
(28:57):
I didn't have anything. The only thing that I had in the
lettuces was there were some pill bugs down in there, those
Roly polys that love that straw mulch and they like to get down
underneath there and once they're done eating their way
through the the compost, they sort of make their way towards
the lettuces. The one problem that I did have
was more due to the excessive weather or the excessive rain
(29:17):
that we have had and the amount of moisture that was sort of
trapped down in and around the straw mulch, which I had a
little too close to the base of those plants.
So until I realized what was going on, there was some rot
going on down in there because the bottom of that lettuce was
just constantly wet. So once I pulled the mulch away
that that solved that issue. But again, those beds, now the
(29:40):
lettuce is all out of there. The green onions are done and
out of there. So the only thing that's in
there at this point is the mint and the beginning of those
cucumbers. I will say with these 10 beds,
the collards, the kale and the lettuce with the mint going into
the cucumbers, I started the cucumbers by direct sowing them
in those beds. I believe that I would be better
(30:05):
off starting these from seeds separately and transplanting
them into these beds mainly because of the mint.
I'm still, I'm still convinced that the mint is actually a good
thing. It really does seem to be
helping. I have barely any weed pressure
in there and there's not a ton of mulch because the mint kind
(30:27):
of took up that space. So there's not a ton of straw in
any of those beds with the exception of the lettuce beds
that interestingly enough, the mint hadn't come back as strong
yet when I planted those. And there is some, you know,
some straw in around the collarsand the kale, but not nearly as
much as you would think. The mint is doing its job, but I
think the the mint can be aggressive obviously, and if
(30:50):
you're not real good at keeping up on keeping it trimmed back,
it can very easily choke some things out.
I also had some deer come in andsort of nose, you know, the the
insect nutting out of the way and get in there and munch on a
couple of the cucumber plants. And I think if they had been a
little bit bigger, that would have been less of an issue.
(31:10):
So I'm replanting some of them because they did either got
predated on or they just didn't do as well because they didn't
get enough sun or there wasn't enough room or whatever.
I think. So I think in this planting I
will probably do this again depending on how those cucumbers
do later on in the season. But I think the next time I may
(31:32):
transplant those cucumber plantsin there rather than direct
sowing them into the beds. I usually prefer the direct sow
method just because I feel like the cucumbers get a better
start. They are more adapted to their
environments more quickly and cucumbers don't love being
transplanted. You can transplant them, but
(31:52):
they just seem to do better and be more robust for me in my
climate in my environment by direct sowing.
So that's why I direct sowed them.
I think next time though, if I were to do them into the mint
like this, I would absolutely dothem ahead of time and then just
transplant them. If you've been watching the
whole tariff situation here in the US with the on again off
(32:13):
again this month, it's 110%. Oh, this month we reduced it to
30% and on and on. You likely have decided against
making any major purchases that might involve something being
shipped in from overseas. I know I have, but I also need
to continue expanding my garden and replacing my worn out old
wooden garden beds. The good news is the raised
(32:33):
garden beds from Planter Box Direct are made in the US by AUS
company from US Steel. These are not beds being shipped
in from overseas that are going to be subject to some crazy mark
UPS no matter when you order them.
They're super durable, they comein a ton of different colors and
styles, and these are the beds that I'm getting crazy high
yields out of this year. Get your own beautiful,
(32:56):
functional and durable raised garden beds by going to
planterboxdirect.com and using code Just Grow 10 to not only
save 10% but get free shipping. So not only do you not have to
contend with tariffs, you don't have to pay anything to ship
these steel beds to your door. Planter box direct.com with code
Just grow 10 to save 10% and getfree shipping on my favorite
(33:19):
raised garden planters. The link is in the show notes.
So the next raised bed pairing that I experimented this year
has absolutely knocked it out ofthe park.
This has been way better than I ever could have anticipated and
it's still going. It's still going to be an
experiment. And this was beets and Kale into
(33:43):
cucumbers. So I have two, I have three beds
of this two of them are 5 foot by 5 foot.
So one of them is a planter box direct bed.
The other one is that, you know,leftover sandbox configuration
from my grandkids. And then one of them is a three
foot by 4 foot bed. And I started by direct sewing
the beets as soon as the soil was warm enough and got them in
(34:04):
their little rows within that bed, allowed the beets to come
up and get themselves established.
And then I transplanted kale plants in between those little
rows. The idea being like we just
talked about with kale, as it's growing taller, I could be
harvesting out from underneath. That would still give the beets
(34:25):
plenty of space to be able to grow and get leafy and big
without impeding the growth, without cutting off, you know,
the, the light that it was supposed to get.
And then I could, you know, harvest the beets from out in
between that kale and allow thatkale to continue to grow because
just like in those other 10 beds, this bed is also
(34:46):
transitioning into cucumbers. So I have cucumbers that have
been planted, again, directly sown from seed on the north side
of those three beds, and there will be a trellis that goes up
there. So the cucumbers should be able
to climb up that trellis and then also spread themselves out
across that bed in and underneath the kale.
(35:07):
And so the hope here is that thekale can continue to grow
without being impeded by the cucumbers, and that maybe the
cucumbers will help to cover that soil where the kale is.
Even though there's straw down there there, I think that extra
layer might help to keep that soil a little bit cooler in the
summertime and allow that kale to continue to grow.
(35:30):
So we'll see how this works. But so far, the kale with the
beets has worked out phenomenally well.
I have harvested so much kale out of these beds.
It's still coming on. I have kale coming out my ears.
The beets have done phenomenallywell.
We all know, you know, beets canbe a little tricky sometimes
(35:52):
because unless you're buying a mono germ seed, beets have three
plant embryos per seed cluster. So if you're not real careful
about how you plant those beets and how you space out those
seeds, you're going to end up with a ton of beets in a row.
Now if you have the wherewithal to go back and send those beets
out, then you can solve that problem.
(36:14):
If you don't like me because I have too many things going on
and I know what I've gotten myself into, you don't go back
and you thin your beats. You thin your beats as baby
beats. And so as those beats start to
mature, I will go through and I will pull them as they get large
enough to use and allow the remaining ones to stay in the
ground and continue to grow. Now, I try to be conscientious
(36:34):
about how I'm spacing those out when I plant, but sometimes they
get a little crowded. Hasn't mattered this year.
Those beats have all done phenomenally well, with the
exception of the deer coming through and once again putting
their noses up underneath the insect netting and literally not
just eating the tops off of the beets, but yanking them out and
dropping them on the ground outside of the bed when they
(36:56):
were done with the greens and just leaving the roots there.
So I had a little bunch of little baby beets that I got to
eat for myself because nobody else likes the beets.
And other than that, the beets have done really, really well
and the kale is continuing to dophenomenally well.
So this is absolutely a pairing that I will do from here on out.
(37:17):
Whether or not the cucumbers workout remains to be seen.
I'll give you guys an update probably, you know, towards the
end of the summer about how wellthat is working.
But I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I am, I am cautiously optimisticthat that is going to work very
well. Now, one that didn't quite work
as well as I would hope, but that I will repeat with some
(37:39):
tweaking, is in two more beds inthe kitchen garden.
Again, these are 4 foot by 5 foot.
And this was kohlrabi with beets.
This one didn't work quite as well, but it has redeemed
itself. So I think I underestimated how
quickly the kohlrabi was going to grow.
(38:00):
So just like the kale with the beets, I planted the beet seeds
1st and allowed them to come up and be established.
And I kind of planted them in little rows in that 4 by 5 bed
and then on the outer rows and then in between the inner rows I
transplanted the kohlrabi. Well, if you've ever grown
kohlrabi, you know, it gets kindof leafy on the top.
(38:23):
If you're not familiar with whatkohlrabi is, it's in the cabbage
family. It forms an above ground sort of
bulb that has these giant leavesthat come up from it.
You'll have to go and look at a picture.
A picture? What was the name of that
cartoon character? Mike from Monsters Inc.
(38:46):
The little green dude. Yeah.
That reminds me of kohlrabi withsome eyeballs, but go look it up
and you'll see it's a very interesting looking vegetable.
They're fabulous. It tastes great, but they get
really big and leafy and those those leaves get kind of tall.
I underestimated how quickly that kohlrabi was going to grow
with those beets. And by the time it was time to
(39:08):
harvest the kohlrabi, now kohlrabi is kind of is A1 and
done and the spacing is a littlebit more specific than you know,
say the beets would be so very easy to know exactly how many I
was going to harvest. They all pretty much get
harvested at once, maybe over the course of two weeks or two
harvests if you have some smaller ones that need to catch
up. But I harvested all of mine all
at once. And what I found was by the time
(39:31):
the kohlrabi was ready to come out of that bed, the beets had
been stunted. The beets, the greens weren't
nearly as big as the beets and the other beds right next to
these that were with the kale. I mean, like to the point where
I don't even think they had really started to form their
their roots yet versus the ones in the next bed that were
(39:52):
clearly already forming their roots as I started to harvest
the kales. But now the kohlrabi has been
out for several weeks and those beets have bounced back and they
are thriving and they are forming their roots with no
problem. So I think what I would do would
be to, I don't know, I might plant the see if I can plant the
(40:13):
beets. Earlier Or I may just not plant
the kohlrabi on the outside edges of the beats and that way
there would be more sun available to those beats that
were sort of in the center. So this would cut down on the
amount of kohlrabi that I would be able to grow in that same
space, but the beets would do better.
(40:37):
Or I could wait until the beets get a little bit older and a
little bit more established before I plant the kohlrabi.
And so that might work just as well.
But the beets don't seem to be any worse for the wear at this
stage of the game. In fact, now it has made it to
where I sort of have a succession of beets.
So all of the beets that are planted with the kale are all
actively being harvested right now, and I'll harvest those over
(40:58):
several weeks as they get largerand larger.
Meanwhile, these guys over here are kind of playing catch up and
so they'll be ready to harvest by the time I finally harvest
the beets out of those other three beds.
So in that way, that delayed maturity is actually helping get
me a better succession. And just like with all of these
other beds, the kohlrabi bed is also a kohlrabi and beet bed is
(41:20):
also getting cucumbers. Now the difference with this is
those cucumbers are going to have those entire beds to
themselves because the Kohlrabi's already out.
The beats will eventually all beout as well.
And those cucumbers are coming up now, so they will have the
entire bed to themselves for theentire summer.
So I'll be interested to see what the yield difference will
(41:43):
be in the beds where the cucumbers have the entire bed to
themselves and the beds where they have to share the space
with the kale or the collards. So I'm going to definitely going
to be taking notes in my garden journal and I will be reporting
back to you guys probably closertowards the summer end of the
summer. And then there's one sort of
(42:06):
honorable mention that is being done in a couple of older, you
know, wooden beds that definitely need to be replaced
because they're falling apart atthis point.
They are like 3 foot by 4 foot. And there are two of these beds.
And I did green beans with dill.Now these beds are along one
(42:30):
side of my driveway. So what I did was I direct sewed
the dill in sort of AU shape, soalong three sides of those beds
and left the front side open foraccess.
And then I planted in the middleBush green beans.
And I was hoping that the dill would help with some of the
(42:52):
insect predation because in addition to having to use the
insect netting to cover to protect from the deer and from
the Bunny rabbits, the grasshoppers love to eat the
leaves of our green beans. And a lot of the time it will
absolutely affect the yield. And like I said, even if you put
those green, the, the insect netting over top of those beans,
(43:15):
at some point they're pushing upon that netting and there are
access points for those insects to get in.
So unless I were to do hoops over the top of them and then
stake it all down, which I don'thave enough hoops and stuff for
all these different beds to be able to do that.
The only other option was to maybe find something that I
could interplant. Let me tell you, I have been
(43:36):
harvesting that dill. It's, it's got nice and big.
I have taken a couple of harvests off of it.
It's bouncing back and growing some more, which has been
fabulous. It smells amazing and the green
beans are super healthy. There hasn't been any insect
predation on any of them. They're all flowering and loaded
with itty bitty tiny little beans right now.
So I'm hoping by next week I will actually get my first green
(43:57):
bean harvest out of all of theselittle Bush beans.
And so is that one that I think worked?
Yeah, absolutely. Will I do it again?
Yeah, I probably will. And if not with dill, then I
might do it with another very strong scented herb that would
do sort of the same thing. The interesting thing is I
haven't had anything going afterthe dill either.
I would have assumed that I would have seen black
(44:18):
swallowtail caterpillars eating on it, because that's one of
their favorite things. And I haven't seen any of that.
Not on my dill or on my parsley,which happens to be around my
Shard, one of my beds of Shard, too.
So I don't know what's going on with the insects this year, but
I'm not going to complain. I can, you know, this could be
(44:39):
causation, it could be correlation, right?
We, we never know unless we do these things over and over again
and let me go look and do a controlled trial and all these
kinds of things. We're never going to know for
sure if what we're doing to keepinsects away is working because
of what we're doing or if there was some other reason for this
to happen. It could very well be there was
just so much rain that the insects haven't been able to do
(45:01):
what they normally do. And once Mother Nature turns the
faucet off, we might be inundated.
Who knows? But if it seems like it works,
then I'm going to do it again, regardless of whether or not I
have actual definitive proof. You know, if it, if it doesn't,
if it ain't broke, don't fix it,right?
But it also encourages me to continue trying new
(45:21):
combinations. So I hope this episode gave you
the inspiration to try new combinations in your garden
beds. And you can do this in the fall
garden too. So you know, you don't have to
wait until next spring to maybe give some of these combinations
a try. You can do this for fall.
Now is the time to start planning for a fall garden.
Just remember to pair high, low,fast, slow, right when you think
(45:44):
about the mature size of the plant and how long it's going to
be in that garden bed during theseason.
And don't be afraid to thin someplants out if you need to to
benefit the other ones if you see some stunted growth.
Experimentation always leads to education, whether it's a full
(46:05):
success, a moderate one, or evena total failure, Right?
That is how we get better. Until next time, my gardening
friends, keep on cultivating that dream garden, and we'll
talk again soon.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!