“Succession planting is as much an art as it is a science. Have fun with it, journal, and track your successes.”

— Luay Ghafari, “Seed to Table:

A Seasonal Guide to Organically Growing, Cooking, and Preserving Food at Home,” 2023

Most vegetable gardeners have had the experience of having so many zucchinis or cucumbers ripen at the same time that we can’t eat them all. Our neighbors start avoiding us so they won’t have to accept another “gift” of homegrown veggies.

This is why one of my primary gardening goals for edible crops this year is to develop my skills with succession planting, the strategic process of planting seeds and transplanting seedlings in order to spread out harvests throughout the seasons.

Author Luay Ghafari discusses three types of succession planting in his book, “Seed to Table: A Seasonal Guide to Organically Growing, Cooking, and Preserving Food at Home.” They are: succession planting with the changing seasons; succession planting with days to maturity; and succession planting to control yields. Each strategy can be used to maximize my growing spaces and manage what my garden produces more effectively.

The easiest way to get started with succession planting is by growing cool-season crops in the spring, then using the same garden space to transition to warm-weather crops in the summer. I can even recycle the space a third time for fall or winter crops.

For example, my spring crops include arugula and radishes, both of which mature in 30 days. Once I harvest these crops, I can freshen up the soil with compost, then use the same space for transplanting an early summer crop of tomatoes. In the fall, I can transition into cool-season gardening again by using the same space to transplant Asian greens or spinach.

I’m also growing snap peas this spring, which mature in 70 days. Once my peas are harvested, I can sow a mid-summer crop of beans and, later on, transplant a fall crop of lettuce, all in the same plot of soil in my raised beds.

The second succession planting method is to grow different varieties of the same crop with different days to maturity.

For example, I’m growing a variety of butter lettuce called Drunken Woman that matures in 55 days (supposedly the name comes from the wavy leaf edges). I can sow this along with Jericho romaine lettuce that matures in 65 days to stagger my harvests. Likewise, if I grow Oregon Spring, a determinate tomato that matures in 70 days, I can spread out my harvests by also growing Brandywine, a determinate tomato that takes 90 days to mature.

Of course, I can also grow indeterminate tomatoes, such as Champagne Bubbles (also called White Currant), one of my favorite cherry tomatoes that produces until fall. This planting strategy will ensure a steady supply of determinate and indeterminate tomatoes for several months.

The third succession planting strategy involves staggering seed-sowing, particularly for crops that have a short harvesting window. Radishes are a prime example of crops that will rapidly lose their flavor if they are not harvested at the right time. It makes sense, then, to sow half a row of radishes one day and the other half 10 days later. In fact, I can stagger sowing radish seeds every 10 days through May.

Other crops that lend themselves to a seed-sowing staggering method include: arugula, pole and bush beans, beets, carrots, cilantro, dill, kale, lettuce, peas, potatoes, scallions and turnips. Veggies that mature in 30 to 50 days can be sown 10 days apart, whereas those that mature in 60 or more days should be staggered every two to four weeks. Here is where Ghafari’s advice to experiment, journal and track successes and failures is most important.

I’m using Territorial’s Garden Planner app to help me plan and keep track of my succession planting. I can double-click on a crop within my plan, such as radishes, and set the in-ground dates from February through June (seeds are initially sown in February and crops are harvested by the end of June). Then, when I view the plan for July, I can see a space for planting a summer crop has opened up in my bed.

I could replace the radishes by transplanting Oregon Spring tomato starts into the space and setting the in-ground dates on my planner from July to September. This will open up a space in mid-September to grow a fall or overwintering crop. As I mentioned last week, the journal feature with the Garden Planner allows me to record the dates I sow seeds or transplant seedlings into the garden, note any issues that occur with my succession planting and upload pictures from my smartphone.