Vegetable Gardening facts new gardeners should know

By Brad and Susan Emery

To The Haldimand Press

Grow things at different times

Succession planting is simply the act of planting one crop after another in the same garden space. 

Succession planting made simple:

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• Plan in advance. It’s crucial to plan, map out your garden, and make decisions about what to grow in each bed and what crops will follow the initial planting. For example, if growing peas in one bed, follow that with a mid-summer planting of broccoli or cucumbers. Come early autumn, those crops will be replaced with hardy winter greens like spinach, arugula, or mache. 
• Feed the soil between crops. To keep production high, work in compost or aged manure between crops. A balanced organic fertilizer will also help encourage healthy growth.
• Use your grow-lights. By mid-May, most of the seedlings that grew beneath my grow-lights have been moved into the vegetable garden. However, I don’t unplug the lights for the season. Instead, I start sowing fresh seeds for succession crops; cucumbers, zucchini, broccoli, kale, cabbage, and more.