Not only does this ultimately boost your food production, but it keeps your plants healthier as well. So, just what does intercropping entail? Let's take a look.

What is intercropping?

Intercropping is the practice of planting two crops in proximity to one another, thereby producing more food on the same piece of land. Common examples include planting a short crop with quick maturity, such as radish, along with a tall crop with longer time to mature, such as tomato or corn. The radish matures and is harvested before the tomato grows tall enough to shade it out. This is different from succession planting, where we harvest one crop, then plant another.

What are the types of intercropping?

There are actually a couple of different types of intercropping. They are:

Mixed intercropping: exactly what it sounds like. Crops are totally mixed within the grow space.

Row cropping: Component crops are arranged in alternate rows. Variations on this theme include alley cropping, where crops are grown between rows of trees, and strip cropping, where several rows of one crop alternate with several rows of the other. Some even plant between rows of photovoltaic cells, a practice known as agrivoltaics.