A bed watered for its vegetables is too wet for its Mediterranean herbs
A bed watered for its vegetables is too wet for its Mediterranean herbs. Tomato, pepper, cucumber and basil want the soil kept steadily moist, about an inch a week; rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano and lavender want it to dry between waterings. One bed gets one regime, and whichever way it is watered, half the planting suffers.
Promising A person has checked it against its sources. If you skip this, it still grows, just less well. The planner suggests it.
How it works
The vegetables' yield and fruit quality depend on steady soil moisture, so the bed is irrigated to keep it moist. In that same soil the herbs' root zone never dries, oxygen is starved and the roots and stem base rot, the failure the herb rule describes. Watered for the herbs instead, the vegetables run short at fruit set.
What to do about it
Give the herbs their own bed or container beside the vegetables, with sharp drainage, as a dry herb bed. If they must share, put the herbs at the highest, driest edge and water at the base of the vegetables only.
How much it matters: No figure is stated. The two regimes are each well documented; the conflict is the inference that one bed cannot hold both, and the rule only advises, because a gardener can water by hand at the base.
The evidence
Evidence: checked against 5 sources in the research-based literature.
The 5 sources
The vegetable garden needs one inch of rain per week
One inch of rainfall or irrigation per week is ideal.
Practice good cultivation and provide adequate water to moisten the soil to at least a 6 inch depth.
Water the plants regularly, but do not over-water, and do not let the plants stand with water in their saucers
Plus one working note on how the sources were read. Every note is in the data download.
How this rule has changed
Every change is dated, newest first. The full record, with each reason, is in the data download.
- Wording made clearer
- A person read the sources and confirmed it
- Added to the rules
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Cite this page
Milpa Gardens. “A bed watered for its vegetables is too wet for its Mediterranean herbs. Tomato, pepper, cucumber and basil want the soil kept steadily moist, about an inch a week; rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano and lavender want it to dry between waterings. One bed gets one regime, and whichever way it is watered, half the planting suffers.” Evidence grade: Promising. https://milpa.garden/rules/bed-watered-vegetables-too-wet-mediterranean-herbs/
A garden planner built on graded evidence. Every claim states its evidence grade and links its sources on the page. Cite it with the grade, and add the date you read it.
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How we grade evidence
- Well established
- The rule names its mechanism and is settled, by sources a person has read and checked or by plain arithmetic and geometry.
- Promising
- The mechanism is named and the literature backs it. A few questions are still open.
- A good hunch
- Plausible by its mechanism, but field studies are thin, so treat it as a lean.
- Contested
- The evidence points both ways, or no study has tested it, so the planner does not enforce it.
- Refuted
- The claim did not survive its sources. It is kept so the folklore can be answered.