Maximum Yield USA December 2019 / January 2020 | Page 46

A
GROWING
MULTIPLE
CROPS
in a Growroom
As we know through nature,
plants are stronger and
healthier in a permaculture
environment. As technology
becomes better, a multi-crop
growroom is now attainable
for the hobby grower,
though patience is required.
by Kent Gruetzmacher
46
Maximum Yield
s indoor gardening continues to
progress as both a science and
artform, it borrows ideas from a variety
of sources. For sustainably minded
cultivators, the natural world provides
an excellent blueprint to mimic for
indoor agriculture. There are some
interesting ways in which indoor
growers can benefit from imitating
Mother Nature — foremost of these is the
practice of planting multiple crops in a
growroom. The benefits primarily have
to do with optimizing grow conditions
and developing resistance to pathogens.
The process of poly-cropping an indoor
garden stands in stark contradiction
to most commercial agriculture
practices where industrial farms plant
massive swaths of monocrop fields.
As we are beginning to understand,
this popular form of industrial
agriculture is inefficient, unnatural, and
unsustainable. Monocrop fields simply
do not exist in nature. Planting massive
swaths of monocrop fields presents
risks to the environment as well as the
crops. Of these risks, it is well known
that planting a singular species of plant
in the same area year-after-year will
leach the soil of nutrients, consequently
stifling food production. Likewise,
single crop fields are far more at risk
from pathogen attacks than more
biodiverse operations.
Permaculture gardening is the
concept of using the most natural
and suitable plant species for
a specific environment in order
to grow crops. This forward-
looking school of thought has
some fascinating implications
in modern crop production,
including controlled environment
agriculture (CEA). Like in nature,
permaculture gardening
also seeks to create entire
ecosystems by establishing
diverse plant species
in a garden. According
to regenerative.com,
“Permaculture gardening
promotes biodiversity.
It seeks to maximize the
number of productive
species of plant within a
plot, not only to offer the
gardener a diverse and
vibrant number of crops to
harvest for the kitchen, but
also so that the ecosystem
itself is strong, with different
plants performing different functions so
that all can thrive.”