What Succession Planting Actually Means
Rather than sowing an entire crop at once and watching it all ripen (and wilt) simultaneously, succession planting means staggering your seeding so something fresh is always coming up behind what you just harvested. It is a favourite technique among local growers because it stretches a single garden bed or even a few pots into a season-long supply chain of greens, roots and blooms.
Lettuce That Keeps Coming Back
Local Master Gardener volunteer Judith Cox grows romaine, buttercrunch, red leaf and heritage lettuces in pots, sprinkling seed onto soil enriched with compost as early as spring allows. The first harvest typically arrives by mid-May, and cutting the lettuce down to its base lets it regrow for a second cutting before the flavour turns bitter.
The trick to a nonstop supply is planting a new seed right beside each existing plant after that first harvest, then repeating the process every two to three weeks. Container gardeners should keep in mind that potted soil loses nutrients quickly, so a weekly feeding of organic fertilizer, such as fish, kelp or hen manure, keeps things thriving.
Working With Sun and Shade
Lettuce loves spring but sulks in the full heat of a June afternoon, so gardeners with in-ground beds can use companion planting to fake the shade a pot allows. Sow lettuce early, then tuck bush bean seeds beside it in mid-May, along with nasturtium and marigold seeds for good measure.
Once the beans and flowers fill in, they naturally shade a fresh round of lettuce planted underneath. It is a low-effort way to keep salad greens going well into summer without ever moving a single pot.
Root Vegetables on Their Own Schedule
Carrots, beets, parsnips and radishes take well to the same staggered approach, with seeds going in from mid-May through mid-August. Unlike lettuce, root crops shrug off frost entirely, and carrots pulled after the first cold snap tend to taste sweeter than their summer counterparts.
Planting later also sidesteps some early-season pests, since the earwigs that go after young carrots and the slugs drawn to root crop tops tend to move on by June. Container gardeners can grow roots too, as long as the pot has a depth of at least 25 centimetres.
Prolonging the Bloom, Too
The same staggered logic applies beautifully to flowers. Daffodils, one of the few bulbs squirrels tend to leave alone, come in early, mid and late blooming varieties, and planting a mix such as ‘Tete-a-Tete’ for April, ‘Dutch Master’ for May and ‘Poet’ for June keeps colour going for months rather than weeks.
Getting Started
Whether you are working with garden beds or a cluster of pots on a balcony, the formula is the same: start seeding in early spring, keep planting in intervals throughout the season, and stay on top of watering and feeding. Do that, and your garden will keep handing you fresh vegetables, vibrant annuals and steady bursts of colour right through to fall.