(2/4) Polyculture – it simply means growing (culture) two or more plants (poly) together in a particular space. For those of us with flower gardens, I’ll wager it isn’t just one species in blocks or rows. Your garden is probably a visually pleasant mix of plants, a polyculture. Using companion planting techniques in a vegetable garden or mixing a few handsome vegetables or herbs in a flower bed are examples of polyculture. When we surround one or more fruit or nut trees with shrubs and/or perennial flowers and herbs, we have a polyculture.

There are lots of benefits to growing polycultures and I don’t know many reasons not to. There are guides available in which the author suggests various plants that work well together for the author. While I can say that there are plant pairs that are tried and true, like basil and tomatoes, there are others that generally work well – but not always. Keep a record of your successes and examine your disappointments.

What are some of the benefits of companions for your veggies? Legumes can feed their neighbors, like beans sharing the nitrogen they take from the air, convert to nitrate, and share with nearby corn. Sunflowers can support a vine of decorative mini-gourds. Companion plants can attract beneficial insects. They might confuse or deter pest insects. Some pairs just look pretty together. Sometimes one partner dies back or is cut down when the partner is planted, as in the case of cover crops. But, your companions may not always work the same way as they did in the book or article you are using as a guide.

Most of the time, the reason a particular grouping of plants didn’t work well for me is because I hadn’t considered all the characteristics of the plants I put together. For instance, I tried growing bush beans with potatoes, thinking that beans would help potatoes because they help corn by fixing and sharing nitrogen. I grew one row of potatoes with quick maturing bush green beans next to it. I got some good potatoes, but I uprooted the beans when I harvested the potatoes.

In another experiment, wide spreading cabbage leaves smothered their neighboring onions. This only works if I leave more room between cabbage plants for onions. Winter squashes planted beneath pole beans are a good match, but remember to train the squash vines out of the way so you can pick the beans!

The companions I enjoy most are flowers planted between vegetables. Some flowers are attractive to pollinators, giving native bees a boost. Some beneficial insects eat flower nectar as adults, but their larvae need to eat insects. Plant nectar-producing flowers, then look for ladybugs feeding on the blossoms – and spending time among your vegetables searching for aphids where they will lay their eggs. Flowers of the carrot family (examples: dill and coriander) and sunflower family are good choices. Did the nasturtiums keep the squash bugs away from my zucchini as suggested? Not entirely, but the red and orange nasturtiums were pretty next to the large yellow flowers on the zukes.

Can a tall plant support a vine? Yes! That’s part of the Three Sisters story. Corn, beans and vining squashes planted together support each other in a specific polyculture arrangement. Corn grows straight and tall, but it needs fertility. Pole beans are nitrogen fixers but they need support. Squashes need room to sprawl, and their large leaves take up lots of space. The three complement each other well. There are several stories about how this arrangement developed, but whatever the origin and however many generations it took to breed compatible plants and find the best arrangement, it is a marvel of Indigenous ingenuity.

According to Native American Gardening (M.J.Caduto and J.Bruchac, 1996), the Wampanoag plant fields of corn in mounds. After the corn sprouts, they plant beans and in the same mounds and squash in mounds between the bean-corn mounds. I tried this arrangement, and by the time the corn tasseled, the beans vined up the corn stalks and began to flower. The squash were running rampant around the mounds, and there were not as many weeds as when squash were planted alone.

Cover crops are another plant combination opportunity a gardener can try. During the growing season, as one crop finishes I like to plant a cover crop to fill the space and enhance soil health. The choice depends on what’s next for that piece of ground. Early maturing broccoli and kale can be removed and replaced with short-lived buckwheat. Once the buckwheat flowers, it’s cut to prevent reseeding. It can sit on the soil to compost in place, or removed to the composter to make room for fall carrots, beets and lettuce. This year I planted a mix of oats and nitrogen-fixing crimson clover after I harvested the potatoes, thus feeding and protecting the soil through the winter. The oats die during the winter and the clover gets cut in the spring. I plan to plant broccoli and cabbage within this cover crop mulch this spring. Yes, another experiment.

Gardening is an outlet for my "let’s see what happens if . . ." tendency, and polyculture lends itself to experimentation. Those Indigenous gardeners saved their best seeds, tried various planting arrangements and kept their learning alive in the stories they told on long winter nights. Our lives are not so intimately tied to a successful harvest as theirs, so what was necessity to them becomes experimentation to me. But I believe as the summers become hotter, perhaps drier or stormier, and we deal with more pests who aren’t playing by the last decades’ rules, we gardeners can find ways to be creative, successful and enjoy our time in the soil. Companion planting can be pleasurable and useful, too.

Polyculture and Permaculture
An Indigenous gardening model that fits today’s landscapes

I recently attended a lecture focusing on the use of native plants in a suburban home landscape. I was conversing with the lecturer afterwards about various uses of beneficial native trees and shrubs in suburban landscaping. When we choose to plant native trees, shrubs and perennials around homes it provides good quality food for insects, birds and small mammals, as well as healthier soil. But what else can they do for a gardening homeowner?

Natives are often less fussy about their care. They need less fertilizer, though annual applications of compost add fertility and maintain soil health. And you don’t want to apply insecticides and fungicides to them, except in the unlikely case of a severe outbreak of a pest or disease. But let’s not forget they are not completely self-maintaining. Sometimes a particular plant may like your growing conditions too much and need some management; bee balm and mountain mint are rambunctious examples in my yard.

The conversation turned to the possibility of an edible landscape using native fruit and nut trees. Persimmons, pawpaws, pecans, blueberries and serviceberries are a few of the natives that can become the centerpiece of an edible landscape, a planting that provides food for the gardener. And this is not a definitive list. These gardens can be small with one or two centerpiece trees, or large enough to provide fruit all season if you have the space. These plantings don’t have to be native; including familiar trees like apples or peaches in the mix is certainly acceptable. These gardens also include smaller shrubs and perennials that provide food for the gardener as well as beneficial insects and songbirds. Since you are the gardener, you can decide what grows in your garden.

The lecturer then asked if what we were talking about was permaculture. What I described was an example of polyculture. Permaculture is more of a philosophy or a lifestyle that includes polyculture food production. Permaculture started when Australian biologist Bill Mollison saw how nature sustainably managed the use of energy (sunlight) and available resources (soil elements, water, and air) and used this knowledge to build and maintain farms as self-sustaining plant and animal communities.

Permaculture is recognized as a system in which the land owner enters the natural balance of their place without becoming a disturbance in that place. Permaculturists try to live in a place, using the resources of that place, and maintain that area’s natural balance as much as possible. Often, it is a community effort where tasks and products are shared among families. It doesn’t seem entirely possible in my mind, even if it’s a communal effort. It takes a lot of work and knowledge – and chocolate doesn’t grow in this climate. Where permaculture is a lifestyle, polyculture gardens and agroforestry are techniques.

But it is possible to take our gardening up a notch or two. Edible landscapes are polycultures that take us a lot closer to the goal of living on our land along side our wild plant and animal neighbors. The concept of a self-maintaining food system is not new, or even original. It’s been going on for millennia, and small communities of indigenous growers who are keepers of this agricultural wisdom are scattered worldwide in pockets of territory largely hidden from modern society.

All over the world, agriculture was perfected by indigenous communities, each different in their unique geographical homelands. Each group fine-tuned their techniques, along with their seed stock, trees and shrubs to the location they inhabited. They understood how soil and growing conditions can differ between differing plots of land and the variance of weather conditions between them.

In south central PA we can look north to New York to see how the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Federation) and their agricultural traditions are examples of permaculture. Over generations, they saved seed from the tastiest, most productive, and most reliable plants. These indigenous farmers weren’t averse to trying new varieties of food plants either, considering corn, beans and winter squashes – the Three Sisters – are not native to this area. These food sources arrived here through trade routes that brought them from Mexico and Central America.

From what I’ve read of their agroforestry, these people favored local fruits and nuts but didn’t refine their agricultural effort to the extent they did for annual crops. They maintained areas of fruits like pawpaws, persimmon, and various berries to supplement their Three Sisters diet. Nuts, especially chestnuts, provided additional protein, plant oils and starch. Leaves, flowers, roots, bark from various species of trees and herbaceous plants provided flavorings. These agroforestry areas and the surrounding unmanaged forests were also their pharmacy. Hunting and fishing also provided high quality fresh and preserved food, too. Let’s not forget maple syrup, their principle sweetener.

My yard includes native and non-native shrubs and trees which were primarily planted for the food they produce. It started six years ago and last fall we had our first pawpaws. Even if I consider only the pawpaws, it was satisfying to eat this delicious fruit. But these trees also provide compostable leaves in the fall, and potentially host the larvae of the beautiful zebra swallowtail butterfly. And the seeds I’ve scattered may become new pawpaws. What turns a solitary nut or fruit tree into a polyculture garden is expanding the area around the tree with other food plants. My pawpaw garden includes blueberries, herbs, perennial onions and pollinator friendly perennials. (The blueberries are off to the side. Remember they need acid soil and that needs to be maintained differently.)

The inclusion of food producing trees, shrubs and herbs to your yard expands its potential for producing fresh, nutritious food for you. Judicious choices include herbs and perennials which also provide food for pollinators and beneficial insects, thereby expanding the ecological value of your piece of suburban landscape. This could be the start of a new generation of living with nature.

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