Maximizing Production: Intercropping

When I lived in Kansas City, MO, I owned over an acre of property in an urban environment, but much of my property was wooded. This reduced my available gardening space significantly. Yet, depending on the year, I was still able to grow a third to a half of my own produce on the usable land I had. I employed multiple techniques to increase my food production, but one major one I utilized was intercropping.

Intercropping isn’t a new concept. Many indigenous cultures around the world have used intercropping for centuries and still do (Gitari, 2021). Here in the United States, the most commonly known form of intercropping is the Three Sisters (Ngapa, et al., 2021). If you are unfamiliar with this type of planting, it involves planting corn, beans, and squash together in the same plot of land. The Three Sisters is one of many forms of intercropping methods.

Now, before I get too far into this, I want to make a distinction between two terms: companion planting vs. intercropping. These terms can be used interchangeably but often have different meanings. I will not be using the term "companion planting" to reference anything in this article. Intercropping involves growing foods together in the same space, while companion planting is often used to ward off pests. There is a lot of misinformation about both topics. I am going to focus only on intercropping.

When intercropping, some combinations just don’t perform well together, and sometimes soil quality is an important factor. Here is an example of both. Researchers recently worked with NASA to test intercropping techniques to see if they would work with Martian soil (Gonçalves, Wamelink, Putten, Evers, 2024). They used three soil types: one simulating soil on Mars, and the other two simulating Earth soil, one being potting soil and the other beach sand. They used three crops: peas, carrots, and dwarf tomatoes. What these scientists found was that in Martian soil, the tomatoes did really well, but the carrots and peas did not. In the sand, however, the tomatoes and peas thrived together. The carrots did not perform well in any of the intercropping and fared poorly in the Martian soil even when planted in a monocrop setting. All of these plantings were done in pots in a greenhouse, showing that even if you have only a small patio, you can grow your legumes and tomatoes together, doubling your yield.

As previously mentioned, the choice of crops is crucial. It has been found that beans and corn improve the yield of both crops, but beans and wheat had a negative impact on the beans (Maitra et al., 2021). Other factors can also improve intercropping. Corn, when planted with sweet potatoes, had a much lower yield, but when combined with fertilizer, it had a higher yield than if they were mono-cropped (Katuromunda, 2021).

There are many factors that play out in intercropping, but what crops can we plant in our own yards? As previously stated, tomatoes and legumes are a great option. Personally, I plant corn and beans in plots in my yard and have wonderful results. Another great option is eggplant and garlic (Want et al., 2015). Okra, like many other things listed here, can also be intercropped with legumes and see an increase in yield (Choudhuri, Jana, 2016). In a fascinating study done on okra and sweet potatoes, there were mixed results, all either positive or neutral. Several okra varieties were planted with several sweet potato varieties. Depending on the varieties and how they were combined, the okra produced more or produced the same, and the sweet potatoes were either the same as monocropping or produced larger sweet potatoes (Njoku et al., 2007). In any case, this makes okra and sweet potatoes great to plant together.

There are many more crops that you can combine and grow together. This type of farming allows us to grow a lot more food in our smaller coastal yards. Using this technique also helps bring more nutrition to our homes, families, and friends.

References:

Gitari, H. (2021, February 22). Intercropping. Harun Gitari.

https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/7471#:~:text=Early%20civilizations%20evidenced%20the%20use,cereals%20like%20wheat%20and%20barley.

Ngapo, T. M., Bilodeau, P., Arcand, Y., Charles, M. T., Diederichsen, A., Germain, I., Liu, Q., MacKinnon, S., Messiga, A. J., Mondor, M., Villeneuve, S.,

Ziadi, N., & Gariépy, S. (2021). Historical Indigenous Food Preparation Using Produce of the Three Sisters Intercropping System. Foods (Basel, Switzerland), 10(3), 524.

https://doi.org/10.3390/foods10030524

Gonçalves, R., Wamelink, G. W. W., Putten, P. van der, & Evers, J. B. (2024). Intercropping on Mars: A promising system to optimise fresh food

production in future martian colonies. PLOS ONE, 19(5).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302149

Maitra, S., Hossain, A., Brestic, M., Skalicky, M., Ondrisik, P., Gitari, H., Brahmachari, K., Shankar, T., Bhadra, P., Palai, J. B., Jena, J., Bhattacharya, U.,

Duvvada, S. K., Lalichetti, S., & Sairam, M. (2021). Intercropping—A Low Input Agricultural Strategy for Food and Environmental Security. Agronomy, 11(2).

https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11020343

Katuromunda, S. (2021). Growth and Yield Response of Improved Sweet Potato Cultivars to Intercropping with Hybrid Maize and Inorganic

Fertilizers. Journal of Plant Sciences, 9(6).

https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jps.20210906.13

Wang, M., Wu, C., Cheng, Z., & Meng, H. (2015). Frontiers. Frontiers in Plant Science, 6.

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2015.00262

Choudhuri, P., & Jana, J. C. (2016). Intercropping in Okra for Sustainable Vegetable Production. International Journal of Bio-Resource and Stress

Management, 7(Aug, 4), 837–840.

Njoku, S., Muoneke, C., Okpara, D., & Agbo, F. (2007). Effect of intercropping varieties of sweet potato and okra in an ultisol of southeastern

Nigeria. African Journal of Biotechnology, 6(14).