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What is succession planting? It’s simple! When your first crops are finished, make the most of the limited space and plan out second (or third!) plantings. After all, your beds are already prepared! See which veggies are best for another planting—so you can harvest before the frost comes!

What is Succession Planting?

With succession planting, you enjoy multiple harvests from a single patch of ground in any given growing season. This is done by planting one crop immediately after an earlier crop has finished to keep the harvests coming. So, you are planting two or more crops in “succession.”

Growing like this not only maximizes productivity, ensuring more for you to eat, but maintaining soil cover with the leaves and roots of crops also provides fewer opportunities for weeds, while protecting the ground from erosion caused by wind and heavy rain.

Many vegetables need only half the growing season to reach harvest time, leaving plenty of fine weather to start off a crop that will either be harvested before the end of the season, or remain in the ground to give a crop over the winter or spring.

Sow the Right Crops

Vegetables that can be followed with a successional crop include:

• bush beans,
• early potatoes
• carrots,
• onions,
• garlic,
• beets
• many salad greens

When these first spring crops are harvested, you can make way for the second crop of the season. These vegetables can take advantage of the warm soil and high light levels to grow quickly.

Before planting the second crop, clean the ground of any weeds then use a rake to break up any clumps and tamp the soil down before raking flat. Good, rich soil that had organic matter added for the previous crop shouldn’t require any more, but if your soil does need a boost now’s the time to add a thin layer of compost before sowing or planting.

Speed is of the essence, so aim to have young plants or seeds ready to go in immediately after the first crop is cleared, that way you’ll make the most of the valuable warmth that remains this summer.

Succession Crops

Some crops may need to be planted out as young plants from sowings made earlier on, or from transplants, to ensure they reach harvesting stage before the season ends. These include many of the cabbage family plants such as kale, cauliflower and cabbage, plus Florence (bulbing) fennel, beets and lettuce. Some will be harvested in the fall, while others will give a small crop in winter before the main harvest in spring.

Plants to grow from seed include chard, Oriental vegetables such as bok choy, herbs like parsley and cilantro, and salad greens such as endive, spinach and arugula.

Planning for Succession Crops

Planning your successional sowings and plantings in advance will make it a lot easier to work out what can follow on from what.

Here’s a list of common vegetables that can be planted in succession, as well as suggested planting dates based on your usual first fall frost date:

Click for a larger version.

For planting dates tailored to your area, check out our feature to help you to plan where and when to sow your successional crops. Start by double clicking on a crop to bring up the plant edit box. Now set the dates it will be in the ground. Repeat for all your crops.

You can now view your garden plan in a particular month, which will show you where gaps appear as earlier crops are harvested. The filter button can then be used to narrow down the choice of crops for starting off in that month: either narrow down to those suitable for sowing or planting by month, or select the ‘Suitable for Fall Planting/Harvesting’ button. It’s now easy to see where you can add the plants you want to grow to your garden plan.

Summer Sowing Tips

Direct sowings in the height of summer can be challenging in hot weather, particularly for leafy vegetables and salads such as chicory and spinach that need cooler soil temperatures to germinate. You can improve conditions by watering into seed drills before sowing to cool the soil down. Repeat two more times if the soil is especially dry. Doing this also creates a moist environment around the seeds.

Sowing under shade cloth can help, or sow into plugs of potting soil in a shady corner to plant out once the soil’s cooled down towards the end of summer.

Some plants such as kale and other brassicas can struggle in the heat. A simple shade cover will help to keep conditions that little bit cooler.

Careful successional sowing and planting can ensure a steady stream of year-round harvests. As always, we’d love to hear your experiences of succession planting – drop us a comment below and tell us what you’re growing.

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