How do you manage and track succession planting/ sowing

[SaraJH]

Ok, I have spent many an hour researching what I can do with my new veg patch and I'm stumped and slightly daunted as to how I can plan my succession sowing.

Everything this year will have to be sowed directly outside as I don't have a greenhouse yet, soon to be rectified.

I am a complete newbie, how do you all track what you can plant where and when, and then what can be planted in succession?

I have 4 x 1m by 2.3m raised beds and I'm really really struggling to understand how much to sow and when in order to feed a family of 2 adults, most books that I have read don't tell me how much crop I will get from sowing X amount of seed.

Are there any good online guides or books that I can buy that would help me?

Should I start building some spreadsheets of my beds and sowing/ harvesting times so that I know when my beds are then free for re-planting. Apologies if this sounds like a stupid question but I'm getting really confused!

BTW I'm a project manager by trade so planning is in my DNA lol!

[dilettante]

Hi there. Depending on what you're planning to grow and what interval you'll sow at, it might be handy to get some string and sticks to mark out rows, as well as to indicate where you sowed up to (really helpful if you can write dates on the markers). Some seeds take so long to germinate, and might be so small when you go back to sow the next batch, that you may not be able to easily see where to start sowing again, or even exactly where the row is!

Mark out your rows with string. Pick the side of the string to which you will sow (or you'll have seedlings growing into the string, or either side, and if you're like me that'l look too messy).

You can find advice for intervals online, or work it out by assuming 2 or 3 week gaps, knowing how many you want to have in the end and dividing into equal batches. Write this all down in your garden diary, or phone, or whatever.

Sow however many seeds you're going to. Mark the point in the row you got up to with the day's date, and if you've space the next sowing date, and then repeat in 2 or 3 weeks.

I'm tired, so I may have forgotten something. But hopefully that helps get you started at least.

[Bigmallly]

This is what I am currently going to use for my seed sheets, I will add the dates to the sheet once sown.

[lolie]

I'm doing the same thing for the first time.

I'm probably going to make a Gantt chart in Excel to track everything.

I started by looking at how much of each vegetable I typically go through each fortnight. I intentionally chose small varieties of things like cabbage and cauliflower because I'd rather have 4 mini cauliflowers in a square and harvest them one at a time than harvest a big one and have it sitting in the vegie crisper or have to freeze most of it.

I took note of the expected seed to harvest times of each thing I'm planning on planting, and I really need to get seeds in pots around now for planting out in 4-8 weeks.

I learned that some things will crop pretty much all at once even if planted weeks apart, so for those vegetables I may need to look at planting different varieties at different times to extend the harvest period.

I think I'm going to colour code my spread sheet so I can see at a glance what needs potting on, what needs transplanting, what needs fertilising and what's reaching the end of it's life.

I do know that when I looked at the "recommended" number of squares for 2 adults it came in at producing way less than I need, so I'm adapting it based on what I actually eat and planting more of some crops. I go through huge amounts of cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, carrots, greens and spuds so those will dominate my vegie patch.

[Martin H]

Hi Sara.

Good post from dilettante on succession sowing. This works for thing like salad crops, which mature fairly quickly and so you can get multiple crops staggered over the season.

A more difficult problem is where you want to get two crops out of the same piece of land in one season. The trouble is our season is pretty short and by the time you've harvested something and cleared the bed it's getting late to sow most crops.

Maybe you could reserve a space to use as a seed bed? Then you could do things like, sow a short row of leek seed in March then transplant them in June a foot apart into the space where your early potatoes were. You can do the same thing with winter brassicas.

Alternatively, you could adapt a Square Foot Gardening (SFG) approach. That will help you with crop yields too because in one square foot you could plant one cabbage, or one seed potato giving you a harvest of 10 spuds, or 16 carrots, or whatever. There are helpful tables, I'm sure you can find them. Then all you have to do is work out how many of each you want to eat, allowing some spare for the slugs to eat.

There are a few threads on here somewhere devoted to SFG, a mod will probably help if you can't find them.

Good luck!

[Bigmallly]

That's the route I'm going down this year Martin. Square Foot Gardening in combo with 1ft square seed sheets.

[SaraJH]

Flipping heck!

It's either the Shiraz that I have drunk tonight or this grow your own lark requires Steven Hawkin levels of intelligence.....

I'm going with the Shiraz confusing my brain! So, thank you to all that have responded, I shall read and digest properly tomorrow

[veggiechicken]

Can I recommend the Expert books - The New Vegetable & Herb Expert: Amazon.co.uk: Dr D G Hessayon: 8601200430936: Books

I have one of the older editions and it tells you when to sow and what the yield should be. Lots of other basic info in a clear, concise fashion. You can often find 2nd hand copies around very cheaply!

[Neilbaldwyn]

I use something similar to Bigmallly. I block out all the sow, grow and harvest dates as I find it helps to have a visual representation of when beds will be empty. Each cell is coded (in the same colour as the cell, so it doesn't look a mess!) which allows you to filter by date to show what you should be doing, be it indoor sowing, planting out, picking salads etc.

[Penellype]

I have 2 spreadsheets, one listed under what I am sowing each month and where I am putting it, and the other listing the various areas of the garden, pots etc and what will be in them each month.

I think it very much depends on how you like to work, and you will find that the best laid plans can go badly wrong if the weather or pests intervene.

One thing you might find helpful is to get one of those 1m long blowaway greenhouses for seedlings. Instead of constructing it with 4 shelves, make up the top 2 shelves as per instructions, then use 4 of the longer bars to make "legs". You should be able to fit this across the width of 1 end of a bed - there will be a little "play" in the legs. Push the legs as far into the soil as you can, then put the cover on and weigh it down with bricks. This will give you some protection for seedlings and 2 shelves for seed trays etc. It is also useful for covering things like outdoor tomato plants if a late frost is forecast. Just make sure it is well anchored, or it will blow over.

[Thelma Sanders]

I often sow the next crops in pots, so they are ready to transplant after the first crop is harvested.

These don't have to be inside a greenhouse. I sow leeks in deep cat litter trays or window ledge troughs, leeks don't mind a bit (or a lot!) of root disturbance. This also applies to cabbages and beans.

Joy Larkham's Grow Your Own Veg book is great. It has diagrams for a family veg plot with squares showing crops and their follow on plantings, all within a rotation plan.
She lists
Broad beans followed by Kale or Spring cabbage.
Peas followed by lettuce/salad leaves or Chinese cabbage or Swiss Chard
Early potatoes followed by leeks or Florence fennel
Early cca spinach followed by sweetcorn or courgettes
Garlic followed by Autumn/Winter salads............... to list just a few LOL

[Lisasbolt]

Some really good advice and example here, i do not do any of it.
One thing i would really recommend is keeping a form of a dairy and write down the dates and what you are planting and little up dates on how they are going, so the next year you can have a scan and see what worked and didn't.

[sparrow100]

I'm in the spreadsheet camp. I have a sowing spreadsheet that shows me the month I'd ideally like to sow and then the additional time in case I had no space to sow then.

I also have a laminated plan of my plot so I can write what is going where. That's in my shed, as if it's at home all hell will break loose when it comes to me putting stuff out.

[vixylix]

I think the big thing to note is that things do not go to plan. And also that nothing in GYO is simple

I miserably failed at succession sowing last year, but then found that some things took way longer than I expected and that most things either weren't ready at the same time anyway or that they could wait until I was ready for them.

Then again I'm growing on a small scale so maybe someone trying to be self-sufficient would need to be much more organised in timing!

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of what I have sown, when and where and new this year - where and when to sow again.

Its all trial and error you'll figure out what works for you!

[Lumpy]

Well done you lot for being so organised. Every year I fly by the seat of my pants.................some good results and some not.

Maybe, before you start sorting out how often you should be planting you should decide on a list your of priorities e.g what you like the most compared to what you could leave if you were forced to. That way your essentials will be the easiest to organose.

p.s what's a spreadsheet - it sounds terrible civilized!