Succession Planting: Here's How You Can Harvest Vegetables Season Long
By Steven Biggs
Succession Crops are the Ticket to an Uninterrupted Harvest
"Succession planting" is when we grow more than one crop in the same space over the growing season. We grow a succession of crops.
As one crop finishes, the succession crop takes its place.
Many crops mature before growing season is done, leaving time to plant a second (or even a third) crop. This means we can follow our spring crops with warm season crops and fall crops.
A "succession crop" is just a fancy name for the crop(s) that come after the first crop is done.
Succession planting works in large gardens, small gardens—and even containers!
If you are interested in the idea of a continuous harvest, keep reading: This article explains how you can use the same garden space for more than one crop.
Plan for an Uninterrupted Harvest
As you plan your vegetable garden, there's more than one way to achieve successive harvests. See how you can slot these planting methods into your garden.
Find out more garden planning and layout ideas.
Different Crops - One Follows Another
A common succession planting method is follow one crop with another one. For example, when the summer harvest of green beans is finished, a new crop of kale for winter harvest takes its place.
Different Crops - At the Same Time
Planting carrots and radish together.
Planting two different crops at the same time is not really succession planting, but it's worth mentioning here because it's a useful idea in garden planning, and can be a good way to get multiple harvests from the same space.
Some people use the term companion planting to describe this idea.
Here are examples:
Fast-growing crops with slower crops: My favourite fast-slow combo is to plant beets in the same space as radish. The radishes grow much more quickly than the beets. So you'll have harvested the radishes by the time your beet seedlings need more space. (And don't forget...beet greens are edible too!)
Sun-lovers with Shade-lovers: Another example of putting two crops together is pairing a tall plant with a shade-loving plant. In this case, summertime lettuce (which lasts longer in shade) under tomatoes.
Grow a Container Vegetable Garden
And get an early harvest of crops that usually take too long!
Same Crop - Staggered Plantings to Spread out the Harvest
By staggering plantings of a crop you can get a longer harvest window. This is especially helpful if you grow lettuce or other leafy greens that bolt quickly.
Unless you’re a market gardener, you probably don’t need an entire row of lettuce ready at once. So only plant part of the row. Then, a couple of weeks later, plant more of the same. And repeat.
Same Crop - Different Maturity Dates
Days to maturity (DTM) is a measure of how long it takes a crop to be ready to harvest. Get a few varieties of the same crop, each with a different DTM so that you have an ongoing harvest. Look for DTM on the seed packet or catalogue.
(The number of days it takes for a crop to be ready to harvest varies with growing conditions, so use DTM as a guide, not an exact planning tool.)
Find out more about seed shopping and lingo such as DTM.
Succession Crops
Succession crops are crops that don’t take the whole growing season to mature. They only need part of a season.
Here are common succession crops:
Bush beans are a common succession crop.
Leafy Greens (plan for successive sowings if you want leafy greens during the summer)
Beets (baby beets for pickling are often from a succession crop of beets planted in the summer)
Cabbage
Carrots
Bush beans
Green onions (I keep an extra bag of onion sets in the fridge, ready as a second crop when I need more green onions)
Kohlrabi
Radish and winter radish
Rapini (I like to plant rapini as a mid-summer succession crop when I harvest garlic in July, because it’s fast-growing and does well in the heat of the summer)
Rutabaga
Summer squash (a good second crop where you start off with early spring greens)
Swiss chard (does well in heat without bolting)
Winter squash
Turnip (I like turnip as a late-summer crop…and you can eat the leaves too!)
Find out how to slow down lettuce bolting.
Interested in growing storage crops? Here are 25 storage crops.
Create Your Own Unique Edible Landscape
That fits for your yard, and your style!
Sowing Summer Crops
Hot summer growing conditions are not always suitable for starting seeds directly in the garden.
That’s because:
In hot, dry weather, place a board over fine seeds to keep in soil moisture and improve germination.
Hot weather can affect germination.
In hot, dry summer conditions a crust can form on some types of soil.
Pest pressures are higher.
Here are tips to plant crop successions in hot weather:
Start transplant in pots, in protected conditions.
For plants that are best directly sown into the garden (e.g. carrots), place a board over the soil so that conditions are more moist for germination
Water regularly because dry conditions really mess up germination.
Transplanting Succession Crops
Summer conditions can make transplanting difficult because transplanting into the hot sun is a big stress for the plant.
So wait for a rainy or cloudy day if possible. At the least, don't transplant in the heat of the day.
Make shade for your transplants using mini hoop houses covered with shade cloth or a light floating row cover.
Or even easier: Put an inverted web tray over top of your transplant for a few days. (The webbed plastic trays from garden centres.)
And then water transplants regularly until they are established.
Lettuce transplants for succession cropping.
One Key to Successful Succession Planting
With intensive growing like succession planting, we’re taking more from the soil. That makes it especially important to manage soil fertility. Feed the soil by amending with compost between crops.
Final Succession Cropping Suggestions
Keep extra seed packets on hand for succession planting!
And don’t forget to grow microgreens indoors over the winter.
Find out how to grow our own microgreens indoors.
