S T R E T C H I N G THE GARDEN

 

For us avid gardeners, we always want more…more garden space and longer growing seasons, especially here in the north. However, most of the time it is just not practical to keep making the garden spot bigger and bigger and it is definitely not in our hands to extend the season.

There is another way to get more from your garden space. It’s called successive gardening, which is basically staggering plantings of crops or planting varieties with staggered maturity dates. Each time a crop is finished, you pull it and start a new one. Commercial growers use this method to reap large, continued harvests and it will work just as well in personal gardens too.

There are four methods of succession planting:

 

SAME VEGETABLE, DIFFERENT PLANTINGS

Stagger plantings of the same vegetable every two to four weeks. Some vegetables put out a mega initial crop and then have smaller yields throughout the summer. This method works great with crops like green beans. Instead of trying to preserve all the beans at once, they will be spaced out over the summer and make it more manageable, unless you prefer to get them all done in a span of a couple weeks.

Besides green beans, summer squash, beets, cucumbers and leaf lettuce also lend itself well to this method. I also do it with potatoes so we have some early to eat and later ones to put back for winter. Planting sweet corn this way gives you a longer season to enjoy it.

 

DIFFERENT VEGETABLES IN SUCCESSION

Some crops, like peas, have a short growing season and after they are done with their space, other crops like eggplant can make use of it. Just be sure to provide the various nutrients that the different vegetables need.

Leaf lettuce lends itself well for this type of planting. It is a cooler season crop. So, after the initial planting is done, pull it up and put a crop like bush beans in its place. Once they are done, it should be cooler towards fall so you can plant another crop of salad greens.

PAIRED VEGETABLES IN THE SAME SPOT

A good way to maximize your space is to companion plant using one vegetable that will mature early and one that will ripen later. A good example of this is planting radish seeds around squash plants. The radishes are fast growing and will be harvested before the squash leaves get too large to shade the radishes.

I did this with onions and tomatoes this year. I always try to leave ample space for my tomato plants to bush out, but early in the season this seems like wasted space. So, I put onions between the tomato plants as well as in rows of their own. The onions are fast growing and I pulled the ones between the tomato plants to use as green onions and left the others in the rows for winter onions. The ones between the tomato plants were used before the tomatoes had a chance to smother them.

SAME VEGETABLE, DIFFERENT MATURITY D
ATES

One way to keep your crop continuously coming in is to choose early-, mid- and late-season varieties. The best way to do this is to read the “days to maturity” on the seed packets. Just about any vegetable will lend itself to this method. With some, you can easily get three or four different crops during the season and with others that naturally take longer to mature, you may only get two crops.

SOME TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL SUCCESSION PLANTING

*Make sure you have enough seed to last throughout the season. Try to plan on how many plantings you will have and that will give you an idea on how much seed to initially purchase. It is best to buy all you need in the spring as later on you may not be able to find what you need. Some seed will last several years and others need to be fresh for good germination.

*Be sure to keep the soil rich and nutrient-dense by adding compost or other fertilizer between plantings.

*Sometimes it is hard to pull out vegetables while they are still yielding. However, once they are past their prime, the space could be put to better use for another crop instead of holding on to the old crop to get the last little bit of yield.

*Remember, you can start your seeds indoors for your multiple plantings. This practice isn’t just for early spring! Summer squash or cucumbers started in May or June will be ready to transplant when their predecessors quit bearing. After these are moved out, seed your fall greens like kale and chard.

*Some vegetables like cooler temperatures like lettuce. These can still be started during the summer if you first cool the ground before planting seeds. To do this, soak the ground and cover with a large board. After a couple days, remove the board and sow the seeds and then replace the board. Check often and when germination occurs, remove the board.

Succession planting will give you more bang for your buck in the garden. No matter if you have a large or small garden spot, it always feels good to make the best use of what you have. It also makes it easier to manage your time when preserving the fruits of your labor by not having it all ripen at the same time.

We gardeners have to use all the resources we have and s t r e t c h i n g the garden is a great way to do this.