Saving Time & Money – Prior Unity Garden Blog

Weed Less and Help Your Plants and Soil Thrive

June 12, 2020June 12, 2020priorunityLeave a comment

If you have garden beds, you likely have weeds, or plants that are not growing as well as you think they should. Maybe you are concerned about keeping your soil healthy.

That is understandable because a key to low amounts of easy to pull weeds, and happy plants and soil is often overlooked or taken for granted. And when we don’t examine this one thing, all these potential garden bummers can happen, and usually do.

Many folks have an understanding they should mulch their garden beds, yet what I see are big misconceptions about mulch and how and when to use it. That is understandable since most of us just do what is fast and simple, usually whatever we see someone else doing, without given it much thought or attention. And this could be leading to some less than ideal practices for the plants in your garden and make more work for you.

What I’ve often seen is mulch used incorrectly for what plants need or want, often based on a visual preference that has nothing to do with the plants themselves. Negating what your plants need leads to them not thriving in your landscape. With some information and consideration, you can solve more than one thing with proper mulching.

Instead of simply hauling in a bunch of bagged mulch for everything, or not mulching at all, understanding mulches and their proper use can give you a big leg up not only on those weeds, but help your plants thrive and protect your valuable soil.

Using the right kind and amount of mulch can provide you:

Less ways for weeds to take over
Protect your soil
Keep your plants in a better environment and
Allow you more time

You might be pulling allot of hard to get at weeds in your garden and struggling to keep up. When I have had to weed an area with landscape fabric under shredded mulch, the landscape fabric becomes more of a weed anchor, with the roots embedded into the fabric, making it hard to get them out. Conversely, with the right depth and type of mulch for each space, the weeds can come out really fast and easy, cutting your weeding time in half or more.

Many folks know I am often talking about healthy living soil. Mulch is a supper important way to protect your soil from being washed away in a heavy rain or bleached by the sun. If you are like most folks, you have either made a time and work, or financial investment to build your garden soil, and keeping it covered with mulch is an insurance policy protecting that investment.

Plants generally don’t want to be left in a desert of dirt on their own. And different types of plants prefer different types of mulch. This is one determining factor for choosing what mulch you will use where. Another is what you have locally for free. Using your resources will help you keep your garden budget down. Keeping your soil covered will not only help your soil thrive, as we have discovered, but also help your plants thrive.

Many times I have spoken with students or clients who one of these issued and mulch was their solution. Stephanie comes to mind, who has a community garden plot. She used hardwood mulch that was available at her plot location to help smother and keep at bay some pretty darn thick weeds that had taken over the plot prior to her taking it over. Then there is Andrea, who didn’t know it was good to mulch her annual vegetable beds and blueberry bushes and had lamented the high quality organic compost she had trucked in, was being washed away by heavy rains. When she added mulches, her plants did much better and she kept her valuable soil in place.

This is why I often say,” When you seek professional gardening advise, and get training, you overcome the blind spots to your garden success.”

To expand and provide you more information on mulching that I can put in one blog post, I have created a short mini-course called “A Deep Dive Into Mulch – How and Why to Mulch Your Garden and Your Landscape”.

It may be a deep dive, but it is still a pretty short course because I value your time. It includes pros, cons and information on all different types of mulches and what mulches different types of plants like to thrive. If you want more info on correctly using mulches, and types of mulches so you weed less, and your plants and soil thrive. Check it out.

Have an awesome garden day, Debby

Designing Your Spring Veggie Garden

March 13, 2020priorunity1 Comment

Bak choi is a great spring crop — Bak Choi

A client of mine, Deanna loves spring greens yet was daunted by lack of success with her spring garden. She realized she didn’t really know how much space different plants needed. She also wasn’t certain what spring plants grow well with each other. She had grown Bak Choi successfully, but that was about all. She wanted to add more greens and cool weather root crops like radishes, carrots, beets and turnips, yet she was not sure how to integrate them with the greens.

In previous years, the root crops ended up being small at best and the greens ended up rotting. She was tired of buying what she felt like was wasted seed. She had tried a couple times and wasn’t happy with the outcome. When she came to me, this was one of her major concerns to insure productivity in her garden. She was so happy when she learned that some simple adjustments could make a huge impact on her productivity.

Here are a few ways she improved her spring garden.

Plant Spacing

When you direct seed it is harder to get plant spacing right. Many folks only direct seed because they do not have a setup to start seeds indoors. This was Deanna’s situation. She was direct seeding all her crops. Seeds are small and can be hard to handle, so folks at the seed companies tend to expect you to scatter all the seeds in a packet in a row and then “thin” them so they have room to grow. This is one way to give your plants more space, but a wasteful one.

It is far better to seed with wider spacing. My rule is to seed at about 1/3 the spacing listed on the seed packet as the final plant spacing distance. This allows you to harvest smaller root crops or greens as they begin to crowd and leave some to get larger. You also don’t waste seed this way and can have one seed packet often last for a couple of years. Very handy to keep costs down.

Avoid scattering seed close together and then leaving them that was as they get larger. This is how Deanna had rotting plants. Not only, were so close they could not get any air circulation and rotted, but they did not have the space to grow to full size and produce the yield you would want.

If you fingers struggle with small seeds consider these options:

Buttercrunch lettuce from Territorial Seed Company — Territorial Seed Co.

Buy pelleted lettuce and carrot seed which is much easier. Check Territorial Seed Company for a variety of pelleted lettuce seed.

You can also get an inexpensive hand seeder that will allow you to dispense smaller seeds a bit easier. These can be super simple up to more sophisticated. Territorial has a selection of these also. One advantage is they can be used for all kinds of seeds.

If you have the advantage of being able to start greens seedlings indoors, it is easier to give each plant the space it needs. I still tend to transplant a bit close together and harvest every other or third one as they begin to crowd each other. This extends the harvest and allows the remaining plants to get larger for harvest later and fills in the space so you are not wasting space in your garden.

Timing

Another key to spring garden success is timing. Granted this is trickier as the weather gets less predictable and computer models are unable to keep up with climatic changes, yet there are some tricks you can employ.

First is to succession plant. This is where you plant a new batch of the same crop about every two weeks. This gives you a couple advantages and can be done with either indoor or outdoor seed starting.

Outdoors, if weather turns too warm/hot/wet/dry for a crop, you can try again. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, it is another way to spread out your harvest. This means you don’t harvest at once. This is especially useful for root crops where you are harvesting the entire plant.

Valmaine Lettuce is great in all seasons — Valmaine Romaine Lettuce

Indoors, succession plant your spring greens and then transition to following those on with summer greens. Some lettuces will take much more heat than others. A couple of my warm weather favorites here are Valmaine and Jericho romaines. These can follow-on after cooler loving lettuces such as most of the butterheads.

Lettuces, cabbage and chard are cool loving crops and you’ll get an earlier harvest if you can start these indoors while it is still too cold to start them outdoors. After you harden them off, they can be transplanted into the ground for your first greens harvest. Spinach though, doesn’t transplant well so start that one directly in your garden.

As always there is trial and error in your specific microclimate and this is another reason for not scattering all your seed at once.

Companion Planting

Spinach and beets are great spring companion plants

Another way to increase the use of your spring garden space is to interplant root crops with leaf crops. Gratefully this is pretty easy with cool weather crops because most greens and roots combine just fine.

Lettuces are happy with all the cool weather roots. Spinach and chard go well as they are in the same plants family. Same idea with kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, turnips, rutabagas and radishes, which are all in the brassica family.

peas can feed the kale so they make great companions — Peas and Kale

Don’t forget a star of your spring garden – peas! Peas thrive in spring so plant some of your pleasure be it snow peas, snap peas or shelling peas. We love shelling peas best, granted they hardly make it out of the garden as I tend to just pick and eat them, fresh, raw and oh so sweet!! My favorites are Green Arrow and Alderman/Telephone Pole. Check the vine height of pea varieties to be sure they match your pea fence. If you don’t have a pea fence, get one what doesn’t need support like Sugar Ann snap pea. There is a reason why you may have heard “peas and carrots” they go tougher in the garden. Plant your carrots in front of your pea fence.

Pulling this all together

May people have asked me about how to design a spring veggie garden, so lets pull some of these tips together.

Choose your varieties and see when they will mature, if they can take some heat and how big they will be full sized.

Next use the companion planting tips to choose which plants to put in which bed.

Then decide how long you want to harvest each type of plant to create a succession planting schedule. This will tell you when to start your seeds, be it indoors or out. Remember root crops are all direct seeded.

Finally, choose a block of your garden for each set of plants for example, one for brassicas, one for peas and carrots, once of lettuce and radishes, etc. Split up each block by how many rounds of succession planting you want. So if you want three rounds, split it up into three sections. Plant the first section, two weeks later the second section and three weeks later, the third session. Tada! You’ve designed your spring garden.

Get more resources on my Resources page

Companion plant cabbage and broccoli with root crops like carrots, betts, turnips and radish — Spring Boundy of Companion Planted Cabbages, Carrots, Beets, Brocolli and more!

Process & Budget Tips to Get Ready for Seed Starting

February 6, 2020February 6, 2020priorunityLeave a comment

Sometime in January or February I really start honing in on starting seeds indoors for my spring and summer plants. It occurred to me, the steps I take to get ready to start my seeds could be useful for you, so here we go …

I start by deciding what I want to grow in the spring and follow-on for the summer. Make a list of what you want to grow, using variety names where you know them. Also make notes about what you’d like to try that would be new for you. Include any types of crops you would like to replace because they did not do well. This could be a type of crop, like broccoli, or it could be that a variety that didn’t do well, so you want to find another one to try.

image of seed inventory spreadsheet page — Your seed inventory can be in a spreadsheet, notebook, jotted on a peice of paper or on your phone.

At some point in this process, do an inventory of your seeds and see what gaps you might have between what seeds you have and what is on your list of plants to grow.

By Mid-January I have received most of my seed catalogs, although there are a couple stragglers in February. Once you have your list of what seeds you need, then you can go through your catalogs and see who has what you want.

When looking for a new variety, compare not only different choices in one catalog, but in more than one. If you think you have found a variety you want to try, see if any of your other seed companies carry it and read their description also. More information on the variety helps you hone in on the best variety for you to try based on your goals.

Granted, I tend to go through each catalog when I get it and then multiple times thereafter. I’ll put a tick mark by anything that looks interesting and I might want to get.

I make a photo copy of the order form so as I start to hone in on what I want to get, I can use the form while looking at the catalogs. That way I am not constantly looking in each catalog for where the order form is. I don’t send the forms in, I will call (first choice) or order online, but having the list makes the ordering processing faster, simpler and easier, plus I can calculate any tax or shipping for budgeting. I can also check my list against the packing list when the seeds come in.

I’ll fill out the forms in pencil, so when I see the total cost of them all, which is pretty much always more than I want to spend, I can go back and erase what I cut out to stay in budget. Alternatively, I’ll star the items I am not going to order, or erase the price, so it does not end up in the total. This way I have the list of everything I wanted to grow in case my budget allows for another seed order later.

Which leads to another budget tip. Spread out ordering from your preferred companies. Order from the ones who have the first seeds you need to start and order last from companies with varieties you can start later. I will sometimes adjust who I am buying what from for this purpose. If I see something I want to grow in the fall, I will often wait to order those varieties until June when I’ll be needing to get them started.

Enjoy a cup of tea and browsing those seed catalogs!

Not sure the best companies to buy from – Get My List of Recommended Seed Companies – Its Free!

Keeping Track of Your Seeds

October 27, 2019October 17, 2019priorunityLeave a comment

Bet there are some of you out there who are seed freaks like me. Can’t wait for the next seed catalog, find yourself trolling through seed websites, seeming to always be looking for the next thing you want to grow.

Then what do you do when you do order your seeds, and don’t use the whole packet? Do they go in a drawer, or bag in a big jumble? Oh, then sometime later, you find some other seeds you just have to get, and those packets get put, well, on the kitchen table, a pocket in your garden bag, in a jar – somewhere!

It is time to plant and you were absolutely sure you got that variety, but darn it, can’t find it, quick buy more. A month later, oh there are those seeds I knew I bought, darn, I double bought and now have more than I need.

I confess to have done all the above!

The answer is coming up with a seed inventory system that works for you. It can be simple or complex, depending on how many seeds you have, and what your personal style is. Make it something that works for you.

I have allot of seeds, I run a seed swap, save seeds, partner with seed companies and did plants sales for years, so having a system became critical to business. You don’t have to be in business to need to organize your seeds.

Here are some tips to create a seed organization system that works for you:

Create a spreadsheet, chart, list on your phone, or a notebook to jot down seed orders when they come in.
Have one place to put seeds that have not made it onto your inventory yet.
Have one place where you store your seeds after they are on your inventory.
Create a way to know when you have used up your seeds. I fold my seed packets in half for example.
Have a trigger in your system that lets you know when you need to buy more of that variety.
And a trigger if you grew something and you don’t want to grow that variety again.

Review your inventory at least once a year. I like to do it over the winter, and if you have a system in place, it takes much less time, so you can get back to important things, like looking at more seed catalogs and websites 🙂

Get A List of Debby’s Recommended Seed Companies for FREE

Why Growing Dry Beans is So Awesome

October 17, 2019October 17, 2019priorunityLeave a comment

Do you love soups in the winter? I sure do, a pot of soup on the stove heating up the house with its yummy smells filling the air. Dried beans are a must have for winter soups.

Today is a pleasantly cool rainy fall day, perfect for listening to some favorite tunes, enjoying a cup of tea and shelling beans, humming and dancing while the shelled beans pile up in a bowl, ready to be planted next spring and eaten this winter.

When I shell dried beans, I keep some of the biggest, plumpest out for planting the following year. The rest are put into jars for eating.

There are literally hundreds of varieties of dried beans, so choose the ones you like to eat. Are you into Minestrone soup, then grow Cannellini beans. Into nachos, then grow pinto or black beans. Love making chili, grow some Kidney beans. Beyond these pretty well known favorites there are loads of other types to try to make you own unique winter soup.

A couple lesser known of favorites I like to grow are Vermont Cranberry and Christmas Limas. Vermont Cranberry is a bush bean, where Christmas Limas are pole beans. They are both beautiful and both make your soup broth a rich warm burgundy color.

You can find lots of varieties of dried beans that grow as bush beans or pole beans, depending on which you prefer to grow. I like a bit of both. Bush beans yield faster, but I get a larger harvest from pole beans. Check the Days to Maturity on the varieties that look interesting to you. This will tell you if you’ll have enough time to grow them until they dry on the plant. If you are in the south, this is usually not an issue. Northern gardeners whose number of hot summer days are shorter may want to stick to shorter days to maturity bush types.

When looking at seed catalogs for bean varieties, note that some beans are good both fresh and dried. This can be a good use of garden space, as you can have a round or two of fresh green beans, then let the rest go for dried beans. This way you get two types of beans from one plant!

Bon appetit, I’m off to enjoy my first cool weather soup made with home grown beans.

Get a Free List of Debby’s Favorite SEED COMPANIES

Build Your Own Seed Starting Rack

April 25, 2019April 25, 2019priorunityLeave a comment

Hi folks, I friend messaged me this week asking if I could recommend a seed starting rack. She is in Wisconsin, so getting started now with her seed starting.

I confess I have little experience with pre-made seed starting racks and systems. I have been gifted with one, but I don’t like it as well as the one my sweetheart made.

Here is the Materials List:

Found plywood, 2×2, 2×4
Shop lights
Chain
Hooks
Screws
Wire
Switch box/s
Timer

Know your soil – Free Soil Course

General process to build your own seed starting rack:

Decide where you want to put your rack. It is best if you can place it in front of a window that gets good light as this will enhance the productivity of your rack. I can also say, it is really nice if you can place it in a permanent location. Ours was built with screws so it can be taken down an reassembled, but frankly, since I am four season gardening, I just keep it up.
Consider how much space you need for seed starting. Small scale home gardeners may not need much. My rack holds 14 seed trays and that is not enough for all I grow. Most folks can get away with one bank of lights which will cover two to four standard sized seed trays. A double bank will give you space for four or five seed trays.
I prefer to use found wood instead of buying new since so much is thrown out these days. We used wood found in a dumpster in back of a store, and some left over from a job.
Build the thing. It can be as simple or complicated as you make it. I have the advantage of having a partner who is a contractor, so he built and wired switches for me.

The best way to show you how we build it is in photos .. so here you go …

DYI Seed Starting Rack — My homemade three tired seed starting rack – front view. The rack has three shelves and uses old shop lights. We found some of these in the trash, some were from a friend who was getting rid of them. Each shelf has two banks of two lights. I use old fashioned ones to have the heat for summer seedlings. One cool and one warm in each bank which is less expensive than “grow lights”.

make your own seed starting rack — Outside corner of the rack.

build a place to start seeds — Inside corner.

seed rack height — We used hooks and chain, attached to a bar on the outside of each shop light to raise and lower the lights to accommodate different height plants.

put your seed rack next to a window for more light — Inside where the chain is attached to the rack.

The top bank we just had lights so made a really simple holder.

grow plants from seed — The top bank we hung from the ceiling.

Wiring for switches. We have a switch on each side so we can turn on one set of lights on each bank. This allows us to put the trays in either direction for growth or saving electricity if we don’t need both sets of lights at once in a bank.

how to start seedlings — Bottom who shelves filled. I will sometimes put trays on top of the lights until they germinate to make more room, as in this picture.

Know Your Soil – Free Soil Course

5 Proven Steps to Starting Your Veggie Garden

February 26, 2019March 18, 2019priorunityLeave a comment

As spring approaches, our thoughts go to gardening. Enjoy this snapshot of my solid step-by-step strategy to start a veggie garden.

Get a Free Workbook to do these 5 Steps:

Step 1: Your Garden Dream, Vision & Goals

For Step 1: it is important to take time to document your garden vision, what goals you have, and your garden as you have dreamed it. Many folks don’t take the time to document this, so their dream garden becomes a vaporous ‘some day’ vague memory, vs actualizing the manifestation of their dream.

Step 2: Observation & Assessment

To avoid making a mistake on the type, size and location of the garden you put in, take some time to observe your space, light, water and other resources as well as your time. This way you can be sure the garden you put in not only is in the best place, but also fits into your lifestyle, and that is where Step 2, Observation & Assessment comes in. This is a critical step to be sure you get a garden that will work for you, and hence move you along that success pathway.

Step 3: Building Healthy Living Soil

a raised bed is one choice for your veggie garden — Building awesome living soil in a raised veggie bed

Healthy living soil is the foundation of any garden, so building soil that will support your garden and grow plants for you is Step 3. You probably know that chemical pesticides and fertilizers kill your soil, but did you know that tilling does too? Tilling allows the carbon in your soil to be released into the atmosphere thereby depleting your soil of it. This is why commercial conventional growers add fertilizers, because they have, by their actions, depleted it from their soil. The soil becomes nothing more than an anchor for the plants, but it is the life in the soil, that grows healthy lively plants.

Step 4: Choosing Quality Plants & Seeds

locally grown veggie plants — Get chemical-free plants

Step 4 is choosing quality plants and seeds for your garden. Learn clues for buying plants, such as purchasing those with a USDA Organic tag or from small local growers you know are chemical free. Checking in on seed companies to be sure they have signed the Safe Seed Pledge, thereby committing to only offering non-GMO seeds, and belonging to organizations committed to organic growing and sustainable biodiverse practices.

Step 5: Garden Layout & Planting

learn garden layout — Organic veggie & flower garden

Then, in the last step, it is time to layout where plants will go in our gardens and do our seeding and transplanting. Once you have done the other four steps, you can be confident that the garden you have built is the right one for you so those young plants and seedlings have the best chance of providing you the yummy home grown produce you desire.

Get a Free Workbook to do these 5 Steps

Easy Gardening – Why Fall & Winter is the Best

August 22, 2017priorunityLeave a comment

Got a text last week from a wonderful lady, who inspired this post. I suspect the heavy bug pressure she in her garden this summer, is what has had she and her husband decide not to garden this fall and winter. I see this allot, people are going into the fall, having had some difficulty gardening, whether it be bug pressure, drought, or life circumstances, get garden burn-out and stop, right when it becomes the easiest time of year to garden.

Here are 3 reasons for you to reconsider and get that fall and winter garden going:

Lack of bugs – As cooler weather approaches, there are not only less bugs eating your food, but less bugs wanting to eat you. Once there is a freeze, you don’t have to worry about bug pressure until it gets warm again next spring. A major relief.
Pleasant Weather – The cooler weather is also much more pleasant to be out in your garden than the brutal heat of summer. Your garden can be a welcome haven of outdoor time when it is enjoyable to be outside. Taking an afternoon day-trip to your garden is less expensive and time consuming and still allow you to get away from work and other concerns.
You get food all year! Most everyone loves their homegrown summer tomatoes. Think about how much better your homegrown tomatoes are than the ones you buy in the supermarket. Ok, translate that into your salads, green smoothies, and winter root veggie soups. Yes, homegrown produce of any variety is going to be fresher, more satisfying and better tasting then store bought.

You still have time, the end of September is the time in US Zone 7 to get those fall and winter transplants in the ground.

I hope all of you out there who are bailing on your garden this fall, reconsider.

Kale, raised beds and hoop house uncovered on a sunny fall day

What Gardeners Do in Winter

November 15, 2016priorunityLeave a comment

“Oh, you’re a gardener, so what do you do in the winter? You don’t grow food right?”

I love this question because there are so many cool things gardeners do in the cold months.

November means cooking up yummy dishes from soups to pies from autumn’s harvest. The more you store in your root cellar, garage, basement and fridge from the year’s bounty, the more bang for the buck you get from your garden. If you get into fermenting and canning, your benefits go up even more.

If you planted a mid-summer crop of potatoes, December is a great time to harvest them. How cool is it to have friends over for dinner for the holidays and servethem fresh potatoes you harvest last week! So cool.

ferment your harvest — Home make kimchee from early winter harvest

December also brings opportunity to share your bounty. You can gift those you love with home grown and dried herbs or fruits. One year we gave everyone popcorn we grew. Another year, it was kimchee we made from fall grown cabbage.

December also brings the first of the seed catalogs and these are one of the best things to read while sipping a cup of hot tea/coffee/coco on a cold wintry day in January and February. This is the time to dream about what you will grow next year .. oh, but wait .. we also do our seed inventory and reflect on what worked and what didn’t during the year with things like:

Did we use up seed of our favorite tomato variety?
Did anything new we tried do great or horrid, or just so-so?
Was there a whole crop fail? This is the time we chat with each other to see if everyone in our community had a bad year with that, or if we need advice on what might have happened in our garden.

Reading seed catalogs lets us dream of warmer days in spring and plan what we want to do next year in the garden. They also provide useful information and are great resources.

A creative winter garden project is designing the next phase of our garden. Whether it be the next phase of our long range garden plan (this is the year I put in blueberries and asparagus!) or so a new garden follow-on layout from spring and summer. Maybe you expand it into fall and winter if you have not yet ventured into four season gardening.

collards are sweeter after frost — Winter collards harvest during snowmageddon

Likely the most rewarding is the continued harvest. My favorite winter harvest story is from a few years ago during a winter storm dubbed ‘snowmageddon’. It was the biggest snowfall I’d ever been in. We dug a path to the collards, buried deep in the snow to harvest some for dinner, and honestly they were the sweetest collards I’ve ever eaten.

Harvesting in winter can be less dramatic, simply have a few things in a simple hoop house or cold frame that could be harvestable in winter and certainly when they get a warm day or two to grow a bit and provide more food offerings.

grow food from seed — Young seedlings under lights in winter

Winter is also the time to start early spring and some summer crops. Your brassicas can be started indoors to be hardened off and planted our as soon as the ground softens up. Some summer crops like basil and peppers that take a long time to germinate and get growing also benefit from being started in late winter.

I’m also in mid-swing with teaching The Foundations of Organic Gardening Course, which empowers people to be successful gardeners.

Winter is a great time study, dream, muse, plan, order seeds, start seedlings and chat with other gardeners.

Mix it up! Companion Plant your Annual Vegetable Garden

May 2, 2015priorunityLeave a comment

Make the most of your garden space by mixing flowers and herbs with your annual vegetables.

Backyard Foodscape incorporates flowers and herbs along with vegetables.

Pairing the right plants together, those that gardeners have observed grow well together, allows plants to do some of your garden work for you. This accomplishes several functions as we can see…

One classic example showing some ways plants work together is the native American corn/beans/squash combination:

Poll beans climb up the corn stalk, so the corn is the support, or trellis, for the bean. So the corn just saved you from building a pole bean trellis. The bean is a member of the legume family of plants. This plant family are what are called ‘nitrogen fixers’, which means they capture nitrogen and store it in nodules on their roots, making it available for other plants to take it in. Corn is a heavy nitrogen feeder, so in exchange for the support the corn gives the beans, the beans feed the corn. The beans just saved you from having to add something to feed your corn. The squash plants wind all around the base of the corn and beans, providing them shade cover to keep moisture in the soil longer for all of them. The squash just saved you from watering as much or putting down mulch to hold moisture in the soil. A couple nice additions to this already cool combo are:

Sunflowers in the mix to also support beans and provide seeds for humans and birds.
Nasturtiums attract a ‘beneficial bug’ called hoverflies. Beneficial bugs are so named because they prey on other bugs that like to eat your food, although, in a diverse ecosystem, all bugs are beneficial to maintain balance. Hoverflies like to eat bugs like aphids and thrips. Nasturtiums repel loads of critters who want to eat your crops including: cabbage loppers, worms and weevils; squash, cucumber and bean beetles and more. In addition, the leaves and flowers are edible!

Companion planting is a good way to design your garden beds. See what plants go together and plant in those combinations. Start with simple combinations and then get more complex over time. Good places to start are: