Succession Sowing to Maximize Harvest

One of my favorite things about succession sowing is the ability to change things up in your garden.   It also allows you to maximize your harvest.  

What is Succession Sowing? 

Succession sowing is when you direct sow seeds with short harvest dates at different intervals.  For example, sowing a row of radishes the first week of May, sowing another row the second week of May, sowing another row the 3rd week of May…… I think you get the point.  You can do this with any crop that has a short maturity date.  Cucumbers, zucchini, beans, lettuce, spinach, kale….there are many options for succession sowing. 

How does this maximize Harvest?

This allows you to best utilize your harvest because it ensures you never have too much food at any given time.  Imagine sowing 60 radishes at all once.  You’d have to figure out how to either eat all those radishes before they go bad or preserve them.  If you choose instead to succession sow, you can have 10 or 20 ready to eat at a time instead. 

This also means you have food growing at different stages of the growing season.  Spring and Fall tend to have less pest pressure than Summer.  Planting in intervals can mean a better harvest at certain points in the season. 

The Best Part? 

Remember at the beginning of this post I said my favorite thing is being able to switch it up?  Let’s say you plant zucchini that takes 60 days to maturity. This is a new variety you are unsure about.  You end up hating it. That is ok because you planted another variety you do like and you still have time to plant something else! You just yank out the plant you don’t like and pop in something in its place. This goes for any variety of plant that has a short maturity date. 

Succession Thoughts

Make the most of your space and time.  Try growing even just one type of plant in succession this year.  Actually, make it 2 things and try something new.  End up hating it, rip that sucker out and put something else in.  I dare you!