Succession Planting - keeps it coming

The idea of succession planting is really quite simple. It's a matter of planting a crop every couple of weeks, so you have the crop maturing every couple of weeks when you finally reach that point in the growing season. This approach allows you to have a continuous supply of vegetables from an ever-maturing group of plantings.

This is a common practice with varieties such as lettuce. Planting in succession allows a young crop of lettuce to always be coming up and ready to harvest. Lettuce that is allowed to become very mature in the heat of summer will often bolt and become bitter. That's no fun. If you don't have "reinforcements" to take over, you'll be plum out of lettuce.

I practice succession planting with crops such as carrots, beets, turnips, lettuce, kale, collards and Chinese cabbage. Making use of crops planted in succession allows me to always have young and vibrant plants that produce well. In older and well matured plants, their capacity to provide you with a robust harvest quite often can poop out of you.

This planting technique also supports a "double harvest" with root crops like beets and turnips wherein you can set aside some of your first planting for harvesting the roots, and successive direct seeding can be used for harvesting the greens.

There are two keys to succession planting. First, don't get all excited about planting your entire garden space all at once. Save some room for the second and third wave of planting. Second, don't wait until you realize you'll need more plants to get them in the ground. Anticipate the need and get those second and third waves of plantings in place so you'll have them when you need them.

If you've always planted and then harvested what you've planted, try this succession method. My experience shows that succession in planting leads to more successful harvests, a much longer season of harvest, and it keeps you engaged with your vegetable garden because you always have something in the stages of seedlings, young growth and harvesting. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Done with Succession Planting, take me back to Harvesting Vegetables