Folks often ask how we keep spinach and cilantro from bolting in the middle of summer or how we pull off lettuce all season long. Is it shade cloth? Constant irrigating? Secret farming sauce? The answer… succession planting (see how the word success is even in the name?!).
Whereas many backyard gardeners plant their whole garden in spring and call it good, farms and super productive gardens require more planning and planting. Some vegetables like winter squash or tomatoes should be planted just once as the growing season only has enough warm days for a single crop. Here at Deep Harvest, we plant most veggies multiple times throughout the season. This ensures they’re always in their fresh, vegetative state of growth when we need them. Take arugula, which we plant not once, not twice, but a whopping 16 times, March through September. Arugula bolts quickly, so this schedule is needed to ensure there’s always a bed of tender leaves for orders.
What about biennial crops like carrots and beets that don’t bolt their first year, you ask? Why not just plant all the carrots we need in March and harvest them throughout the entire season? Well, even root veggies don’t hold in the ground forever. After about a month, a mature carrot becomes a woody, hairy, split open, rust fly larvae-infested, or otherwise unsavory experience. Thus, we plant them every three weeks March through July to ensure they’re always prime. Another secret to effective succession planting is variety choice. Whereas our sweet, tender Hilmar makes a great spring/summer carrot, we favor Danvers for our final fall planting. It holds up much better in wet, cool soils. All the seeds in our Deep Harvest Seeds catalog perform well in our climate, but some need to be planted in the correct season to ensure a good crop.
If succession planting sounds like far too much effort, but you still dream of a bountiful gardening season, try planting crops that you can harvest for long harvest windows. Kale, chard, cucumbers, basil, zucchini, and tomatoes are the all-stars of Team Productivity. Go team!