succession growing

[andy_j]

I want to extend the growing season of my sweetcorn, french beans, onions, courgettes, parsnips, leeks and mangetout.

For the courgettes, sweetcorn and mangetout in particular, i'd like to do an early sowing so i get the crops from june to july. I'd then like to do a sowing, maybe 6 weeks later so i get august and september crops.

All my onions have come at once too.....about 500 of them. Can i start a later batch off so they are ready in september ?

Im still new at this allotmenting lark so still learning....plus our allotment show is the 22nd september and i won't have anything left.

Ta muchly

[Alison]

Sweetcorn - you might be lucky but I find they grow at the speed they want and harvest quite late in the season round here, you might be luckier as you're further down south

French beans - so long as they ground is well fed and you keep picking they'll produce for months so I've never felt the need to sow more than once although do usually put a seed or two at the bottom of each cane when I plant out the indoor reared plants so I suppose that sort of is.....

Onions - I only grow a few over wintered ones and the spring sown ones keep for months

Courgettes - again, keep picking and feeding and they'll go on until first frosts

Parsnips - these will keep all winter in the ground, I only start harvesting from a spring sowing in about November / December

Leeks - as parsnips

Mangetout - succession sow these although find they do better in the earlier part of the year

For the courgettes, sweetcorn and mangetout

[Greenleaves]

As regards sweet corn I sow in May, June and July....smaller cobs on the later sowings but still viable in the south.

[andy_j]

See im starting to pick my sweetcorn and i don't want 100 cobs in 4 weeks, then nothing. Courgettes have been unbelievable this year....june and july have produced up to 20 fruits a day from 11 plants but i feel they may give up soon.

Perhaps i need to get the high potash feed out !!!!!

[Alison]

Way too early for sweetcorn round here so no chance to squeeze another round in (and it's horrible anyway ) and don't worry about the courgettes, feed them and they'll fruit until the frosts (look a bit ropey by then but still productive). Think OH is usually pleased when they do eventually die!

[marchogaeth]

I'd be saying the same as Alison for my part of the world. Sweetcorn is a marginal crop for me even with some of the fancy F1 types started indoors (although this year it is looking amazing!). I use my tunnel to extend my season with french beans and mange tout and have the earliest broad beans but that doesn't help you unless you can do something with cloches in the autumn/winter in your milder climate.

The only thing I thought you might consider next year is looking at a range of squash which will harvest later into the year and give you a bigger range of tastes and textures than just courgettes, some even storing into winter. I have got Burgess Buttercup this year and they are absolutely gorgeous. I've also got what we call Fighting Urak Hai (Uchi Kuri)romping away as well which are meant to be super tasty as well as Butternut Squash.

[kathyd]

I've autumn-sown mangetout in the polytunnel in previous years and got a crop late spring before the others start, and I find my autumn sown onions do better than the spring ones usually (except when I fail to pull up the nasturtiums around them and they kind of get lost by the summer!). And onions store well when dried properly, provided they haven't gone to seed so I don't really need to extend the season (although getting another crop would be great because we never seem to have enough onions!).

I'm sure I read on here somewhere that different varieties of leek will crop at different times, but I may be imagining that .

If you make a late sowing of french beans in July you should get an early autumn crop, provided the weather doesn't turn too horrible before then - or you can sow under cover. Broad beans of course can be sown in the autumn too if you pick the right variety (Bunyards Exhibition I think is one of them), and then again in the spring, so you can get a longer season.

I'm hopeless at succession sowing myself, so I'm pretty resigned to grow-and-freeze!

[Penellype]

My experience of this, for what it is worth, is that each crop has its optimal growing time when you will get the best out of it. If you try to extend the season with successional sowings or different varieties, you can do this because plant breeders have tried very hard to make it possible. However there is usually a price to pay - a small crop, a failure due to poor conditions, poor flavour or size etc.

I think what you need to do is assess whether you want to use that space for something that might do anything from produce some sort of crop to keel over and die, or for something that is at its best at that time of the year. This will depend crucially on how much space you have to start with, and if you actually like what will grow naturally at that time of year.