Backyard Garden: Vegetable Garden H
This garden demonstrates companion planting and succession planting to maximize production and add beauty to the garden.
Points of Interest:
Companion Planting practices are used to reduce pest pressure and promote healthy plants. Zinnias have been planted in and around the vegetables to attract pollinators to the garden. Pollinators such as bees, 
ladybugs, wasps, butterflies, and hummingbirds help to disperse and distribute pollen while feeding on the blooms of the zinnia. This can help increase the harvest yields of vegetable crops. In addition, zinnias bring beauty and color to the garden and make nice cut flowers for bouquets.
Chicken wire row covers are used in Bed H to protect against nibbling wildlife. The chicken wire row covers are lightweight and easy to move when planting, weeding or harvesting during the season. The chicken wire row covers pictured here have provided sanctuary for caterpillars. Parsley has been a good source of food for swallowtail caterpillars and the row cover helps keep the birds from preying on them. “Do-It-Yourself” wire row covers can be found on the internet.
Tips:
Some backyard gardens have limited space. Using succession planting maximizes what can be grown in a season and allows for efficiency in the garden space.
There are multiple ways to practice succession planting:
- Plant the same vegetable each week over a two or three week period in order to spread out the harvest. (Examples: lettuce, radish, turnips)
- Plant one vegetable in the early spring and a different vegetable in the late spring or early summer. It may even be possible to plant another vegetable in the same space in early fall. (Examples: Bed H will plant sweet potato after broccoli and garlic, green beans after lettuce.)
- Plant different varieties of the same vegetable with different maturity dates. Even though the varieties are planted at the same time, different maturity dates will spread the harvest out over a longer period. (Examples: Bed H plants multiple varieties of tomatoes that have different days-to-maturity at the same time, different disease resistance profiles, and determinate/indeterminate)
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