As a gardener looking for the best crop practices is inevitable, while bearing so many things in mind, there is a limited spaces to grow my veggies and i felt mixed criooing would be the best, give it a try and today it yielded a very good result.
This time I did grow jute mallow and african spinach together, its five weeks after planting and i must say the veggies are eco friendly.
Apart from managing the limited space, is there other benefits of mixed cropping?
From my garden i can say there are also benefits of this practices not just by utilizing the available space but also pest and diseases have been so limited, unlike before growing a single type of vegetable can be stressful especially when it comes to managing the pest and the diseases, i felt there are some diseases associated with some veggies, but when you grow two or more. It limits the pests actions
It also safe one from the stress of weeding, veggies farming requires adequate weeding, manual weeding using chemicals will be dangerous as it can also affects the vegetables but while grwoing two or more veggies together you can also focus on one piece of land for weeding, and there will be no much room for weeds to grow since the veggies have occupied the available space.
Also there is a less need for watering, you don't have to go around watering all the land just focus on one.
The spinach tends to mature real quick before the jute, in this picture above the spinach is the one with flower meaning is getting matured and can be eaten,
- so what i do is to remove the spinach and replace with another seedling so from mixed cropping to continuous cropping, thats a life of a farmer, being able to think fast, finding a solution to a problem with the limited resources and achieve enormous results.
Adding more veggies is still my plan especially in the coming rainy season.