Succession Planting: How To Grow A Continuous Harvest

Want to become less dependent on grocery store shopping between harvests? A well-planned garden can provide a lot of food without having all of the yields ready at the same time.

Plants maturing at a steady rate allow you to enjoy fresh food all season! If that is what you are looking for from your home garden, this blog post will resonate with you.

Whether you prefer direct sowing seed or transplanting seedlings, you can use succession planting to increase your garden's potential and create a continuous harvest. Let's get started on your success-ion story!

Preparation Is The Key to Success

Before you start a vegetable garden, I encourage you to take time to make a garden plan. It will save you time and hassle in the long run! 

Set yourself up for success by using quality heirloom vegetable seeds (instead of just whatever types of seeds you can get your hands on) and prioritizing healthy soil! Healthy soil is the foundation of a thriving, productive garden. You'll thank me later.

What Is Succession Planting

Succession planting is simply the technique of planting a crop in staggered intervals instead of all at one time. It guarantees a prolonged harvest instead of a single large (and maybe overwhelming) harvest. The main idea is planting crops at the same rate you will consume them at harvest.

This gardening practice was essential before modern technology and grocery stores. Planting in stages, or successions, provided a steady flow of food throughout a season.

Advantages of Succession Sowing

You don’t always have the luxury of leaving something in the soil until you are ready to eat it. Sometimes, when it's ready, it's ready! But as soon as you harvest it, it starts to expire, especially when growing highly perishable foods.

We love lettuce, but we can’t eat 30 heads in one week. Using succession planting spreads out our harvest over time.

Succession planting produces multiple, easy-to-manage yields, instead of having a rush of produce ripen all at once (which can lead to waste). It offers time to eat and preserve the harvest before it goes bad.

Succession sowing extends the growing season, saves space, and cuts down on pests and diseases. It also acts as gardening insurance, if you will, by growing multiple rounds of harvest in case your first crops are negatively affected by unexpected weather or something else.

Same Crop, Staggered Plantings

So, how exactly does it work, you ask? Take the total amount that you want to grow in a year of a specific crop. Divide that amount into smaller portions based on how quickly you can harvest and use it. Again, the goal is to plant crops at the same rate you will consume them when they are mature.

When growing lettuce, for instance, I like to plant my spring lettuce in four successions—planting one quarter of my lettuce seed at a time. In very early spring, I direct sow the first succession, then wait 2 to 4 weeks before planting out another quarter of the seed, then another 2 to 4 weeks before planting out another quarter, and so on until the bed is fully planted.

When the first planting is mature and ready to harvest, the next one is maturing, the next one may be seedlings, and the final section is freshly planted. I can harvest lettuce from the first planting for 2 or 4 weeks (I use the cut-and-come-again harvesting method for all types of lettuce), and then the next planting will be ready to start harvesting.

This gives me a steady supply of fresh lettuce for 8 to 16 straight weeks! Pro-Tip: To maximize productivity, plant the most cold-hardy varieties of lettuce first in the spring and the most heat-tolerant varieties last.

Best Crops for Succession Planting

You may be surprised to learn that you can succession sow any annual crop, even tomatoes, herbs, root crops, beets, cut flowers, summer squash and types of corn! The method is something that is easily adaptable to your garden, various crops, and your needs. Here are more examples of how to use it:

For fast-growing one-harvest varieties like radishes, I plant one row at a time at regular intervals of 3 days to 1 week until I have planted out my entire crop. By the time I am done planting my rows, I already have radishes ready to harvest.

I plant my beets at 4 to 8 day increments. When beets are ready, you can’t leave them in the ground or they will get woody. With succession sowing, I have a steady supply of perfect beets for weeks!

When planting carrots, I plant a row or two every week until I have sown the total amount I want for the year. It might take me a month and a half to plant all of my carrots! (Read this blog post to learn when to harvest carrots.)

Succession sowing tomatoes is not as straightforward. I look at the time it takes each variety to mature and try to time out my planting so that I will have two seasons of tomatoes. I usually end up planting my second crop of tomatoes in July.

Remember to use succession planting again in the fall garden, too! Give each fall crop time to fully mature by the end of the growing season.

Planning Your Succession Planting Calendar

Succession planting does take a little more planning, but it is not difficult. Simply put, plant crops at intervals within your growing season. Pro-Tip: Contrary to what you may have heard, your growing zone doesn’t affect which annuals you can grow or succession sow.

Use each variety’s days to maturity and germination temperature range to determine when to start planting. Clyde’s Garden Planner can help you decide when to transplant your seedlings and direct sow seeds.

Then, divide the entire amount of that crop you want to plant into smaller portions based on how quickly you can harvest and use it. Because I don’t like to have bare spots in my garden, I often will stagger my plantings at intervals of half the time it takes those seeds to germinate, but you can absolutely stagger them further apart if you want.

If creating your own succession planting schedule seems overwhelming, try using the Seedtime App. One of my favorite components of Seedtime is that it tells you when to sow and succession sow each crop!

Replenishing Soil Nutrients Between Plantings

It is always a good idea to topdress each round of plants with compost and a serving of Trifecta+. If you want to be thorough, perform a soil test. Replenish azomite and trace minerals after each crop is harvested to help the next thing you plant there succeed.

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