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Show f Backyard ps Gardener The straight-up gardening system By PATRICK DENTON Copley News Service Avid gardeners who lack adequate space for all the vegetables they'd like to grow find their imaginations imagina-tions stretched to the limit in search of ways to pack the maximum amount of food possible into a limited garden area. And that's not a bad thing because some of the best gardening ideas'" emerge from big gardening garden-ing problems. Growing as much food as possible straight up, on a fence or some sturdy support, sup-port, or on poles, is one logical log-ical method of using space well. If the support is to be built in a vegetable patch, though, be sure to place it along the north edge so it will not shade other plantings. plant-ings. Then the vegetables growing upward can often accommodate plantings of smaller vegetables, vines or flowers at their feet. Certain combinations can even prove mutually beneficial. bene-ficial. Chive and parsley, and some say geraniums, grown at the feet of your roses help repel aphids. The parsley, according to some gardeners, also increases in-creases the scent of rose blooms. Thyme planted with cabbage cab-bage and broccoli helps to discourage those butterflies butter-flies that lay worms on your cabbage family crops. Planted together, carrot and onion are said to cleverly mask each other's scents and confuse their insect in-sect enemies. Finding odd spots in the yard for a plant or two, using narrow strips along a sunny garage or house wall, planting in large containers con-tainers for patio or driveway drive-way these are some possibilities pos-sibilities for achieving an edible landscape. Have a look in the shrub border or flower garden as well. A flower bed can be quite attractively edged with parsley, beets, radish and leaf lettuce. All have very pretty foliage, the carrot especially delicate and ferny. And not out of place at all in a flower bed would be odd plants or patches of curly kale, peppers and eggplant. A most attractive perennial peren-nial edging plant for a rock garden or flower bed that would also supply a long season of gourmet treats would be a row of Alpine strawberries. In my garden, gar-den, Baron Solemachers deliver tiny, sweet berries till the end of October, and they will remain evergreen throughout the year in mild winter areas. Another space-saving idea for efficient use of the soil is interplanting, or intercropping. in-tercropping. This whole idea is based on the fact that some vegetables take a longer time than others to mature. Relatively speaking, vegetables that take a while are ones like corn, tomatoes, peppers, parsnip, carrot, onions, Brussel sprouts and cab bage. Now in these days of scientific sci-entific plant breeding new varieties of faster-maturing crops are being developed devel-oped every year. So I am speaking in just a general way these are the ones that take longer in relation to other, speedier (or earlier) earli-er) types of vegetables like radish, spinach, peas and lettuce. Now this offers all sorts of possibilities in which the early, fast or cool-season vegetables can be planted in between rows of later developers. As the late developers de-velopers grow, the early vegetables are pulled up and used, allowing the long-season types room to stretch out when they need it. For years I've planted spinach in between the lines where the corn rows will be. The spinach is used and uprooted by the time the corn would be shading it out. Other possible quick crops to combine with corn are radish, leaf lettuce, even head lettuce grown toward the ends of the rows where they will be kept cool but still receive light Early leaf lettuce can be grown for its short season in between onions, cabbage, cab-bage, peppers or tomatoes. Since leaf lettuce is best grown cool and quickly, it is pulled up before it turns bitter to give its slow-growing slow-growing companions space to grow. |