Succession Planting
Succession planting provides a continuous stream of a
particular vegetable over an extended portion of the growing season. For
example by employing succession planting, your garden will produce lettuce
over most of the gardening season. And it is easy to do!
How to plant successive crops:
While this is easy, it takes a little planning. We will
use lettuce as our example. Instead of planting a large crop, sow a small
row or even partial row, sufficient for a week or two's harvest at most.
Plant each row or partial row every two weeks. After three to five
plantings, you will be able to use the space from the first row as it will
be harvested and can be re-used again. As summer approaches, use lettuce
varieties that are more heat tolerant. Then, change back to cooler weather
lettuce in the fall. Vary your selection by alternating different kinds of
lettuce.
Make sure to keep observations as to how well your
succession plan worked and alter it a little each year. The exact timing
between harvests will vary. Several factors affect the timing of each
plants' maturation. They include the grower, soil quality, plant variety,
and weather to name a few.
Any vegetable with a short growing cycle is a potential
candidate. You can even practice this method of expanding the harvest
period on longer growing vegetables like corn. For vegetables like corn,
there is two basic methods of doing so.
With the first method, you divide the garden space that
you allot to corn into three or four portions. Then plant each section one
to two weeks apart.
A second method is to choose four different varieties with
four different maturity dates. Again, divide your garden space into three
or four sections. But, this time, plant is all varieties at once. A
variation of this is to plant the early corn first, the next type one week
or so later and so on. If you are planting a lot of corn, this gives a
small break in between harvests. As much as we all love corn on the cob,
some people do get tired of it if it is eaten too frequently.
Vegetables that work well with succession planting( Some key examples):
Excellent
-
Carrots- Harvest small carrots as "baby
carrots" early, then a continuous harvest. Grow two or three
plantings two weeks apart.
-
Lettuce -most types, especially non-heading ones do
very well. Select more heat tolerant varieties in mid-summer.
-
Radish- Their short growing cycle makes them ideal
candidates. But, how many can you eat!?!
-
Spinach- Switch to heat tolerant varieties in the
summer.
Good
-
Beans- plant every two weeks. Try different varieties!
-
Corn
-
Onions- Green onions work best
-
Peas- Peas have a short enough growing cycle, they
just do not grow well in mid-summer heat.
-
Zucchini- Usually two or three at most plantings per
year.
Okay
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