Wondering why some home gardens seem to be abundant all seasons? The secret lies in succession planting. Succession planting is an essential gardening technique that not only increases your harvest yield but also improves plant health and helps with pest control. Interested? Keep reading and get to know the basics of succession planting.

What is Succession Planting

Succession planting is a gardening technique where the same crop is stagger planted to allow continued harvesting throughout the season, often until two to three months before the first frost. It is sometimes referred to as successive planting.

Benefits of Succession Planting

Succession planting can maximize your yield. Even if some crops get damaged by pests or diseases, you can count on other crops to thrive. It also allows you to start anew if you notice signs of plant illness, preventing the problem from spreading to the rest of your garden.

Succession planting also ensures regular harvesting throughout most of the year. If your goal is to grow your own vegetables and reduce grocery spending, this method will help you save the most.

Finally, succession planting keeps your soil healthy and prevents erosion by keeping soil covered with vegetation.

Three Types of Succession Planting

There are three common types of succession planting, each suitable for different vegetables:

• Stagger plant the same crop every few weeks: Use this method for your favorite vegetables to ensure a steady supply.
• Switch to a different crop after each harvest: This method works best with crops with shorter maturity times, ensuring diversity and frequent harvesting.
• Mix up faster-growing crops and slower ones: Similar to the second method, this method maximizes your harvest and ensures you can enjoy different types of vegetables throughout planting season.

Best Vegetables For Succession Planting

Technically, you can succession plant pretty much everything. But some crops work better using this method than others. For example, early spring vegetables are great options for succession planting because they help you start your harvesting cycle sooner than other crops. Here, we’ve picked the best crops for succession planting.

	Maturity Cycle	Sowing Intervals
Head Lettuce	4-8 weeks	3 weeks
Cucumber	Approximately 2 months	3-4 weeks
Sugar Snap Pea	55-75 days	3-4 weeks in spring, slightly longer in the summer
Basil	60-75 days but can be harvested sooner as younger leaves	3-4 weeks
Spinach	21-40 days	2-3 weeks
Tomato	2-3 months	4 weeks
Carrots	2-3 months	21-30 days

Head Lettuce

Head lettuce is a great option for those new to succession planting. Head lettuces are easy to grow and come in many variations, allowing you to test around until you find a variant that grows the best in your garden.

There are two ways to harvest head lettuce. If you cut the head above the growing point, the crop will grow a new head. If you cut the entire head out at the base, you can plant something else in its place.

Maturity cycle: 4 to 8 weeks. Sowing interval: about 3 weeks.

Cucumber

Salads, pickles, stir-fry, cold snacks… cucumbers are certainly one of the most robust cooking ingredients in the kitchen, especially during warmer weather. Since cucumbers are prone to pest damage, succession planting often allows you to break the pests’ breeding cycles. Since cucumbers are more fragile, it’s best to plant several successions per season so you don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Maturity cycle: approximately 2 months, but may fluctuate depending on the variants. Sowing interval: 3-4 weeks or longer (during warmer weather)

Sugar Snap Peas

Sugar snap peas do great in cold zones, making them perfect for Kansas City’s lingering chill every spring. They can also handle wetter conditions than many other crops. Again, perfect for our rainy seasons.

To grow sugar snap peas, dig a trench down the center of a garden bed (or two trenches on each side). Plant peas with an inch or so in between and cover them with soil. After the peas begin to sprout, add grids, wood sticks, or a fence for the peas to climb up.

Maturity cycle: 55 to 75 days. Sowing interval: 3-4 weeks.

Basil

Love home-made pestos? Use succession planting to grow basil! Many basil varieties today have higher disease tolerance, making them much easier to plant at home. If you only harvest leaves off the stem, the basil plant can keep growing without being replanted.

Note that basil is extremely vulnerable to cold weather, so make sure you start planting after the last frost.

Maturity cycle: 65 to 70 days to reach full maturity. Sowing cycle: 3-4 weeks.

Spinach

Spinach is a winter-hardy leafy vegetable. It’s perfect as “fillers” for conditions that may not be suitable for other corps. You can grow spinach during earlier seasons and later into fall after the temperature drops. However, you still need to stop planting before the first frost.

Maturity cycle: 21 to 40 days (vary by crops) Sowing cycle: 2 to 3 weeks

Tomatoes

Tomatoes take a long time to sprout. However, if you know how to propagate tomatoes using large cuttings, you can plant several successions during the season. Simply take a cutting with multiple nodes mid-late season, plant it in a pot for rooting, then move it outdoors in 2 to 3 weeks.

Determinate tomatoes, like Roma tomatoes, also mature faster so you can get more harvests going.

Maturity cycle: 50 to 85 days Sowing cycle: 4 weeks

Carrot

Believe it or not, homegrown carrots are juicier and crunchier. You can also grow whatever variant you want, instead of being restricted to the standard orange carrots in most grocery stores.

Since carrots are winter-hardy, you can start planting as early as February. Cold temperature also makes carrots sweeter. After sowing, cover the carrots with a row cover and water daily to provide enough moisture for them to sprout again.

Maturity cycle: 2 to 3 months. Sowing interval: 21 to 30 days.

Start Succession Planting in Your Home Garden

It’s never too late to start succession planting as long as you’re sowing the proper types of crops, since cool-weather veggies don’t grow as effectively once the temperature warms up.

Another thing you must do to start succession planting is create a sowing schedule. Choose the vegetables you want to grow, write down the date you planted them, then build a sowing schedule using the sowing intervals provided in the table at the beginning of this article.

Happy growing!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best window for succession planting?

You can begin planting winter-hardy plants as early as February. However, you should wait until after the final frost for plants more vulnerable to the cold. Most plants can be harvested through summer and early fall. Finally, you’d usually stop succession planting 4 to 6 weeks before the first frost of the year.

Do I need a greenhouse for succession planting?

A greenhouse will extend your planting season throughout the year, but it is not mandatory for succession planting. This technique works just fine in your regular garden and doesn’t require any specific equipment or facilities.