7 Vegetable Succession Planting Tips: Timing and Varieties
We home gardeners must maximize our beds to grow as much produce as possible. We don’t have the luxury of owning acres to cultivate vegetables! Succession planting is a simple trick to help you grow as much food as possible during the growing season.
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Rather than planting in neat, widely spaced rows, home gardeners often put many different veggies, herbs, and flowers close together to maximize space. Like overcrowding, succession planting is a simple trick for making the most of your vegetable growing space.
Also called successive planting, this method allows you to extend your harvest over many weeks rather than having it all at once. You’ll have a continuous supply of leafy greens, herbs, and nutrient-rich vegetables to harvest and eat from spring through fall. Some vegetables work well in succession plantings in winter! Radicchio, fava beans, and winter radishes work well in some frosty regions.
No matter what plants you like to grow and eat, a few successive plantings will grant you bigger, better harvests than you’re used to. Let’s break down this method, how to do it, and which plants are best for it.
What Is Succession Planting?
With successive sowings, you plant multiple rounds of seeds to create an endless supply of harvestable goods. Quick-growing crops like radishes and spinach go from seeds to adult plants in a month or two; if you plant one round, you’ll have nothing left after your first harvest!
For optimal harvests, you’ll plant seeds of your favorite crops every one to two weeks. As the last round reaches a harvestable size, the current planting will grow and take its place. Continuous sowing and harvesting are key to promoting ample roots, shoots, and fruits.
Vegetable Succession Planting Tips
These seven tips and tricks encourage successful sowings and harvests of vegetables, no matter what zone you garden in. First, try an easy-growing plant like lettuce to learn the ins and outs of successive planting, then move on to more complicated species like cucumbers and beets.
Never Stop!
Many seed packets have optimal sowing dates on them. They’ll recommend planting seeds every two weeks during the spring, for example, or starting them indoors months before planting. Though seed packets have the best recommendations for the plant in question, you don’t have to follow all their instructions.
I recommend planting new veggies, herbs, and flowers as long as your season allows. If the summer is oddly cool, keep planting cilantro! Don’t stop just because the packet told you to.
If a round of plantings doesn’t work well, keep track of your results and try something new next year. Seeds are cheaper than potted seedlings, so it’s okay to plant them liberally and continuously. Try to fill every nook and cranny with veggies, fruits, herbs, and wildflowers.
Plant When You Harvest
Some of us gardeners don’t have ample time to garden. You may only see the plots when you’re planting or harvesting goods. If this is the case, try combining the two tasks into one!
As you harvest annuals like cilantro, radishes, and lettuce, plant more seeds in their place. Fill the spaces they leave behind with more seedlings for future meals.
This method works best for crops you harvest whole, like head lettuce, radishes, and cilantro. It doesn’t work for perennial, fruiting crops like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.
Watch the Night Temperatures
Alongside last and first frost dates, nightly temperatures are helpful in knowing what plants will perform well. Some are frost tender, while others prefer frosty temperatures to grow sweeter, crisper, and more nutritious.
Track the average night temperatures with a journal or the weather app on your phone. Warm-loving species, like tomatoes and peppers, prefer night temperatures above 50°F (10°C).
Leafy greens like lettuce, arugula, and spinach can thrive near freezing as long as they are established, while cole crops tolerate short periods of below-freezing temperatures. Knowing when the weather is growing colder or hotter will help you choose the best crops for the garden.
Plan for Spring and Fall
Some veggies prefer growing when the days lengthen and warm, while others like the end of the season when the days shorten and grow cooler. By choosing the best plants to grow during the seasons, you create a pest-resistant, high-performing garden.
Vegetables like spring radishes, leafy greens, and peas are superb for spring, while cole crops, radicchio, and Brussels sprouts work well from summer’s end through autumn. Make consecutive plantings every few weeks during these seasons for a continuous supply of seasonal veggies.
Go With the Seasons
Sometimes, your true last and first frost dates differ from the average dates for your region. Rather than cursing the weather, move with the seasons! Ditch the recommendations on the seed packets and look to your average night temperatures to determine what’s best to plant.
Grab the corn, squash, and bean seeds if your spring is short and sweet! These crops don’t benefit from early starts, and they aren’t ideal for transplanting. If you’re making successive sowings, wait for warm weather to arrive first before planting.
When summers are shorter and cooler than you’d prefer, shift from tomatoes and peppers to cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. Go from amaranth greens to lettuce, spinach, and chard.
Get Organized
Using software is difficult for some gardeners! I get it, as I’d rather spend my time in the yard than behind the computer. Though you may not want to use software, some planning or journaling will help you make better cultivation decisions in the future.
If you prefer online tracking, try the Epic Gardening Planner. It’s a simple, online software that’s easy to use and ideal for tracking the garden; it also comes with a free journal! Paper journals and spreadsheets are great if you prefer using pen and paper.
Track the dates you sow seeds and when you harvest the mature vegetables. Also track other helpful data like the temperatures, first and final frosts, and which plants performed well and which didn’t. After years of tracking, you’ll have a perfect template with planting dates based on your garden’s conditions.
Use Rotation and Intercropping
Alongside succession planting, crop rotation and intercropping help maximize small spaces for explosive vegetable yields. Crop rotation prevents pests and diseases from building up and helps avoid nutrient shortages in the soil. You’ll rotate one plant family with another every three to five years.
Intercropping, or overcrowding, is a method of planting more plants in a small space than spacing guidelines recommend. Another term for it is companion planting. As you harvest one of the veggies, the other grows and fills its place.
Combine root crops with leafy greens or basil with tomatoes and peppers. One historic planting combination uses corn, beans, and squash. It’s the Three Sisters method, and it was pioneered by Native Americans who grew the crops.
Recommended Varieties
Though many crops work well in succession, some are better than others in the home garden. Select from these popular varieties that excel in raised beds, containers, and borders.
Leafy Greens
Greens are an important part of a healthy diet! They’re indispensable in the kitchen, as they add color, taste, and texture to a wide array of meals. Use them in salads, soups, and casseroles, or decorate charcuterie boards with their frilly leaves.
The best greens to plant consecutively are annuals with quick maturing periods. Lettuce, endive, escarole, spinach, arugula, Swiss chard, and amaranth are some of the many viable options. Use species that perform well in your region.
If you can’t decide, select a mesclun mix with many different types! ‘Chef’s Choice’ is a tasty blend with lettuce, mustard, arugula, and endive. Sow seeds successively every three weeks during the growing season until two weeks before your first frost date.
Herbs
As with greens, the best herbs for planting over and over are the annuals with quick growing periods. Parsley, dill, and cilantro are some common types that work well. Others include summer savory, marjoram, and chamomile.
You may successively sow perennials like basil in regions with winter frosts. Basil is frost-tender and will only survive the winter in mild weather. Make repeated plantings of basil, and you’ll encourage a prolific supply of fresh leaves before summer’s end.
Root Crops
These are some of the best plants to sow again, as they require little space aboveground. Their large, bulbous roots take up space below the ground. Plant lettuce and arugula in between the roots to fill the empty spaces. Harvest the greens, then let the roots fill the space.
Carrots, beets, radishes, rutabagas, and turnips are some of the many root crops you can plant consecutively from spring through fall. Many are frost-tolerant, growing sweeter and more flavorful after cold weather events.
The quickest maturing roots are spring radishes. Some, like ‘Cherry Belle’, may mature in as little as 24 days! Plant them repeatedly to have dozens of radishes for your salads and fermented goods.
Peas
Peas prefer the cool seasons to mature in, as they love moisture and cold temperatures. Though they’re not good candidates for repeated plantings in summer, you can plant them as often as you’d like in late winter, spring, and autumn.
Try a mix like the pea 2-pack for a blend of different peas. Snow, snap, and shelling varieties are the three main types. Snow and snap peas have edible pods, while shelling varieties have inedible pods with fat and sweet peas inside.
Beans
Like peas, beans are leguminous crops that form pods and tasty seeds. Unlike peas, beans are a hot-season crop. They work well from spring through fall. Plant them every week or two from the last frost until 80 days before the first.
Two main types of beans exist: pole and bush. Pole beans are twining and climbing varieties that reach staggering heights, while bush types grow dense and low to the ground. Opt for both if you have the space for them, or select the type that’ll work best in your yard.
Cole Crops
Cole crops are cool-loving species in the mustard family Brassicaceae. They thrive when temperatures remain between 60-68°F (16-20°C). Cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli are the most common types, though mustard, Brussels sprouts, and kale are other well-performing vegetables.
Cole crops perform best in fall or spring in cold climates. Mild climate gardeners may sow them weekly in fall and winter for a spring harvest.
Scallions
Scallions, or green onions, quickly reach maturity when they’re pencil-thick. You may let them mature and thicken, or pull them entirely and plant new seeds. A row of scallions is perfect for home cooks who want fresh onions to garnish their dishes.
Sow green onion seeds every two to four weeks while the days are warm and sunny. Some varieties, like ‘White Lisbon’, are cold-tolerant. Use them in early or late plantings to cheat the seasons.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does succession planting work?
This technique works by replacing quick-maturing vegetables with new seeds. It grants you continuous harvests and higher yields than when you plant one set of crops each season.
How do you plan succession planting?
Journals, planners, and spreadsheets are incredibly helpful in planning when to plant which varieties. Use physical journals, or try garden planning software. Track the dates that work and the ones that don’t, then adapt your strategy each year based on the results.
What are intercropping and succession planting?
Intercropping is a method for planting many different vegetable species close together. It also goes by the names companion planting and intensive planting. Succession planting is a technique of sowing seeds or potted plants continuously over many weeks for a steady harvest.
