Get ready to March into your gardens and make them sustainable! One of the most fun and ultimately lucrative ways to garden is by polycultures. Do you remember driving by miles upon miles of fields of cotton or corn or rice? Great. Now totally forget about these monocultures and start with a clean slate. Polycultures are agricultural plots that contain a multitude of different crops. They create their own mini-ecosystem, in which a diverse group of plants is less susceptible to disease. The most common and simple combination are beans, squash, and corn (sometimes called the Three Sister’s Garden). The beans undergo nitrogen fixation, returning valuable nitrogen to soil for other plants. The corn and the squash shades and covers the ground, which decreases evaporation of moisture from the soil. This is great for you too! Not only will you not need to buy potting soil or use MiracleGro and its unlikely that a disease or pest will like both corn and squash, but you’ll also have several different kinds of produce from relatively little space. To start, you’ll definitely want a legume of some sort, as well as a ground cover (melons and berries work well for this). In my personal experience, I’ve found that tomatoes and strawberries work well together too! Good luck and post pictures!
