What I Succession Plant Throughout the Summer
When it comes to gardening through the summer, there are certain crops that I like to succession grow for various reasons. I plant continuously throughout the summer for harvests until September. Some of these crops bolt in the intense heat, planting in part shade locations (under 5 hours of sunlight a day) is ideal. In this blog, I’m going to break down the details of each of these crops so you know whether these are plants that you want to succession plant throughout the summer as well!
What is Succession Planting?
To start, let’s discuss what exactly succession planting is! In simple terms, succession planting is planting a new seed (or starter, if you prefer) of a crop every few weeks to maximize production, or extend your growing season. For example, since one carrot seeds will only produce one carrot, this is a great crop to be succession planted every 2 weeks so you will have carrots all throughout the growing season. Or, in the case of cool weather plants like lettuce, your lettuce will bolt before it can produce multiple times, so starting a new batch from seed allows you to continue getting lettuce, even as the temperatures rise.
What I Succession Plant Throughout the Summer
Peas: You can plant all of your peas at once, but for us, we plant our peas at the end of March into the beginning of April in two steps because we have one raised bed that doesn’t get enough sun for the peas to thrive until mid-April/early May, so this is what works best for us! I plant another round mid August for Fall crops!
Lettuce: Like I mentioned above, because lettuce is a cool weather crop, it will bolt (or go to seed) once the temperature is too hot, so I don’t recommend planting all of your lettuce at once. Do about one third, then two weeks later another third, and so on. This will ensure you’ll get lettuce throughout the summer without having 10+ heads of lettuce waiting to be used all at once! I change locations of my lettuce as the summer heat arrives. Move to a part shade location as mentioned above June-August.
Tip: Plant under your tomatoes for shade in the summer months!
Chard: Similarly to lettuce, chard is another cool weather crop that will bolt or taste tasteless if left to regrow throughout the heat of the summer. I plant half of a bed of chard in the first phase, and then another half of a bed about two weeks later (mid June). I also plant a dense row for baby salad greens, the flavour is unreal!
Spinach: One of my favourite parts about spinach is how well it freezes, so if you want to plant all of it at once, there’s no rush to use it up while it’s fresh. I personally plant one bed at the end of March, and then another bed in June. Since spinach will not tolerate heat, we plant in an area that gets sun 1pm on and survives the summer!
Tip: Look for seed packets that germinate in 60 days or less for fast producing crops. Choose your varieties wisely!
Carrots: My personal favourite to succession plant! I plant my first batch in March, and then again every two-three weeks until the end of June. I recommend keeping carrots in the ground until you are ready to eat them, but don’t leave them too long – they’ll end up not tasting great; this is why succession planting is a great tool! Plant good storage varieties again in August for the fall.
Radishes: Similarly to carrots, one seed gives you one vegetable! Plant radishes every two weeks until mid-June, and then again at the end of August for a fall crop.
I hope you learned a little more about succession planting in this blog, and can implement some of this schedule into your own garden! Happy growing!
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