Succession Planting

[digitS']

I will post this picture to show you . . .

. . . this. See that little, miserable squash plant? I don't know what that brown thing is ~ probably, a dead squash plant leaf :/:

The 1st picture is my most mature early cabbage! I'm happy with it .

Often, I have set out late summer squash plants between the cabbage. I could see that wasn't gonna work so well this year . That's the only squash plant that go stuck between cabbage plants! The others went between the kohlrabi. (I will try to get a picture of those little guys tomorrow .)

Succession planting works but I wasn't gonna be able to get the cabbage out of the way early enuf so the squash would have a chance this time! They've got a good chance with the kohlrabi which is almost all harvested. Besides, those are more open plants to start with.

Can you tell us about your succession plantings, please?

Steve

 

[lesa]

I had left some onions in, overwinter. I planted cabbage between them. That worked out fine, since I used the onions early on. I am getting ready to harvest my garlic- once it is out of the ground I will plant bush beans, again. But, that will be after the fact....
Those cabbage look fabulous! We had one for dinner the other night.
I also left a kohlrabi in the ground overwinter. I was surprised it lived. As soon as spring, sprung- it went right to seed- no bulb formed at all. The seed pods are drying right now- can I plant those seeds this year?? Or, do they need to be cold stratified first?

 

[journey11]

That cabbage is looking mighty tasty to me right now, Steve! One of my favorite veggies...(heck, what am I saying, almost all veggies are my favorite...ha.) I like cabbage just about anyway you can fix it, but our favorite lately has been frying it up with a little bacon, onion and garlic, then mix that with some egg noodles. It's a Polish dish, but I forget the name.

I am trying to get more organized to do succession planting because it's just so practical and I'd like to keep the fresh stuff coming. So far the only things I've done well are beets and carrots, although I am putting in a second (bigger) late cabbage crop this year. For most of those things you'd like to put in a cellar your late planting is going to be the one to store throughout the winter anyway. Or like carrots, mulch 'em and leave them in the row for winter.

 

[digitS']

Bush beans are my standard for succession! But, the bunnies got the 1st bed of beans so I immediately planted another - a little farther from the neighbor's raspberry/grape jungle. I may not plant any more if those wascally wabbits leave that 2nd planting alone! That cabbage and noodle dish sounds tasty! I've got the red cabbage beyond the Early Dutch, some Late Dutch, and some Savoy .

I don't know if kohlrabi needs cold stratification, Lesa. I kind of don't think so but I'm unfamiliar with biennial brassica seed-saving. Radish and bok choy don't require cold treatment.

Here is one of the oddest succession planting that I've done for a few years:

These are young bok choy plants and I'm moving a few of them out of that bed to another location (this was in the spring). Nothing unusual about them or me out there moving them around. But look what I'm giving a little more room to:

Yeah, that's a dahlia that is just emerging! I mean, why let that ground wait for that dahlia and all of its buddies to show up?

As of today, the dahlia garden is all dahlias . . . There was still some Southern Curled mustard to get out of there . The bok choy harvest in those beds was completed about a week ago.

Steve

 

[chris09]

Hey Steve,
I see your crop of rocks are doing as well as mine, must be a good year for the rocks.

Your cabbage look real good Steve.

Chris

 

[digitS']

I'm going to show you the pile of rocks that the neighbor (& his predecessors) built up over the years - it's huge!

Maybe I'll get real ambitious sometime and build a rock walled gardensite .

There should be some use for the rock harvest!

Steve

 

[digitS']

Your cabbage after the overwintered onions made me think of these, Lesa.

I showed you these potatoes a few days ago but there are a few zucchini plants amongst the bunching onions in the foreground. These are the "Goddess" red bunchers and they are destined to be moved quickly out of the way . . . (or, the zucchini are gonna smother them !):

There's also 1 volunteer purple orache plant that somehow was left in that bed (there in the corner ). Orache is my earliest vegetable but I'm not gonna be able to leave that one as a mother plant for next year's seedlings. The zucchini has other plans for that space!

Steve

 

[chris09]

Well you build a nice garden wall I've thought about that more that once.
My wife's Grandfather built this with a rock harvest years ago. (excuse the goof ball dog in the background)

Chris

 

[digitS']

Grandfather's stone work will be there for many years. Goof ball dog only has a little while to be a goof ball dog .

This is somewhat of an example of real intensive planting of garden space. Which, I suppose, is what succession planting is - over time. Space/time . . .

This started out as a bed for sets: onions & shallots. My camera isn't quite angled right to see the onion row clearly but I could show them in the harvest bucket since they were pulled a couple minutes after the picture. They aren't especially large bulbs but they're okay. The smaller, French Grey shallots were pulled today as well. They will have a place to cure in the backyard for a couple of weeks. Those larger hybrid shallots are still out there.

I didn't get the lettuce yet but it will go sometime this week. That is the 2nd time lettuce transplants have joined the onions & shallots in that bed. The first planting was harvested about a month ago and these replaced them. We put them in as little "clumps" of 4 or 5 plants and harvest them the same way often - all at once.

Initially, onions and shallots about the 1st of April, joined in a couple of weeks by lettuce transplants, which were followed after harvest by more lettuce - at least, on the outside of the bed.

So, what are the little green plants between the shallots and onions? Well, that's basil. Basil wants to wait until really warm weather. Some of the plants from earlier sowings of basil in the greenhouse are in large containers. The seed for these plants was sown quite a bit later. These warm-season plants are following the cool-season plants and will soon have all that space to themselves .

Steve

 

[Kassaundra]

Succession and companion planting is what I am attempting, but this is my first year and I got started late, and I have A LOT to learn.