It's been a busy week at Whitsend as I clean up the first beds and start planting the fall succession of crops.
Succession farming is a production model that produces a succession of crops throughout the season.
To use lettuce as an example, I sow enough lettuce for one to two weeks (plus 10-20 per cent for anticipated seed or plant failures) in the nursery several weeks before the anticipated harvest date.
About 3-4 weeks after the seeds are sown, the plants are moved out to the hardening off shelter for a couple of days. This allows the plants to get used to a controlled amount of wind, wider temperature fluctuations, and the intensity of the sunlight.
When the plants are ready, I take them out to the field and transplant them into the designated bed.
The nursery sowing is repeated every one to two weeks. This practice continues throughout the season until mid to late summer.
When the lettuce is harvested, the bed is cleaned up. Any lettuces that failed (too small, went to seed, succumbing to pests, or just extra that no-one wants) and weeds that grew in the understory are composted.
The bed's surface is cultivated once a week for (ideally) three weeks. An additional application of compost is added for the soil. Then, the following crop is planted. In this case, the lettuce bed is turned over to another leaf crop not related to lettuce, such as coriander, amaranth, spinach, etc.
The same bed then provides an additional crop for the later part of the season, effectively doubling my farm field size.
The next season, the leaf bed now becomes a fruit bed (in my rotation pattern, fruits, onions, celery, fennel, and potatoes follow leaves). Most fruit crops perform best when their soil is amended with compost the previous year. (Leaf crops do best when their compost is added during the year they grow).
Since most fruit crops grow all season long, the meaning of succession takes on a slightly different meaning. When I start my first tomatoes in the nursery (about March 10th), I consider this the first succession. After a week, I observe how many seeds have germinated. If I don't have enough, I plant a second succession of tomatoes.
The first succession goes out to the field in mid May; if frost takes some of them, then the second succession is available to replace the first losses.
Several successions can share the bed simultaneously. I interplant the green onions between the pepper plants. The peppers may only have one or two successions represented in their bed. With 32 plants per bed, there is room for 32 clumps of about nine green onions. I only grow about a dozen clumps of green onions at time, so it often happens that three succession are in the bed. With two pepper beds, each interplanted with onions, the last successions are going into the second bed as the first successions are being harvested from the first bed.
Another example of multiple successions in a bed are with a crop such as pak choy.
This crop has a lot of appeal to a limited number of customers. An entire bed is way too much to serve up at once, so the bed is divided into quarters and receives four successions over a period of four weeks. As pak choi matures in three weeks, the fourth succession is being transplanted as the first is being harvested. Coriander is grown in a similar fashion.
It would be very convenient if I could plant four dissimilar crops in the same bed that could be planted and harvested at the same time. This would make caring for the bed easier (also, there tends to be a shading issue with the first few plants in each succession growing next to the taller plants in the preceding succession).
However, I have not yet found an ideal match. Here are four crops that initially appear similar, yet would conflict if placed in the dame bed.
Pac Choi - 3 weeks after transplant.
Arugula - 3 weeks after direct seeding, this might actually work BUT the pac choi will attract flea beatles. These will not affect the established choi too much, but will do considerable damage to the freshly sprouting arugula.
Coriander - 4-5 weeks after direct seeding, but is considered a leaf crop which are not planted in cabbage crop beds.
Spinach - 5-7 weeks after direct seeding; this crop needs lots of sun and won't tolerate the shade from surrounding transplants as it germinates. As well, it prefers a more alkaline soil and grows best after peas. Not to mention the fact that I require several full beds of spinach for a decent serving at harvest time.
So, for all the times I have referred to succession planting, here it is, a hopefully easy to understand explanation of succession cropping.
I'll leave with a note about another model which I am familiar with - in fact, it is how I have started to grow many of my herbs and flowers. It is called permaculture.
A permaculture "bed" or garden is a self seeding garden that provides its "spring crops" once in the spring and possibly again in the fall. Most are harvested and some are left to go to seed; the seed falls to the soil and sprouts the following year.
After the spring crop finishes, the mid season crop(s) have begun to mature, and the process continues until the last fall crops are harvested and or go to seed. This could be considered succession cropping of a sort, but succession cropping usually refers to the successions of individual crops.
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I consider it very good form to bring my writing to a point, but the point may well be that it is getting late, I am tired, and want to "get off the farm" for a few hours.
Talk to you next week.
Send your questions!
Bob