Succession Planting Vegetables Chart: Intervals by Crop

The five steps at a glance

Succession planting means sowing a crop in several small batches instead of one big one. The table shows the five steps. Each is explained below.

Step 1: Pick the crops that repay repeat sowing

A West Virginia University extension article from 2019 describes three kinds of succession planting. You can make several small sowings of the same crop. You can choose varieties with different maturity dates. Or you can replace a finished crop with a different one.

The first kind is the one the chart below covers. A West Virginia University Extension article calls it the easiest and most common method.

Quick crops suit it best. West Virginia names radishes, lettuce and other salad greens as the usual choices.

The second kind needs no chart, only a seed catalog. The article's example is sweet corn: an early variety at 68 days, a mid-season one at 75 days and a late one at 91 days.

A garden that is harvested all in one week was planted all in one week.

Step 2: Read the succession planting vegetables chart

The chart below comes from a University of Kentucky extension article by a county horticulture agent. The article credits the intervals to a seed company's chart, so treat them as a sound starting point and not a law.

Sources do not agree on every crop. West Virginia's article says radishes, lettuce and other salad greens are generally planted at two-week intervals. Kentucky's table gives 7 days for the same crops.

Choose by how you eat. Want a salad every week? Sow every 7 days. Want fewer, bigger harvests? Sow every 14.

Step 3: Count the sowings your season holds

An interval is only useful once you know how many sowings fit. The sum is one plus the season length divided by the interval, rounded down.

Take a spell of 12 weeks, which is 84 days. Radish at 7 days gives 13 sowings. Bush beans at 10 days give 9. Beets at 14 days give 7. Carrots at 21 days give 5. Summer squash at 30 days gives 3.

The counts are arithmetic from the Kentucky table, not a sourced harvest forecast. Your real count depends on frost, heat and how long each variety takes to mature. Frost can push a first sowing later, and summer heat can shorten a lettuce sowing.

Tomatoes and peppers work differently. Kentucky's article suggests 2 to 4 plantings per season and warns that you need transplants ready for each date. Its Central Kentucky example plants on April 30, May 30, June 30 and July 30. Each planting date comes with a seed-starting date about six weeks earlier. The April 30 planting, for example, starts from seed on March 15.

Central Kentucky sets those dates. Count from your own last-frost date instead, and keep the 30-day gap between plantings.

For direct-sown crops, your frost date sets day 0. A University of Vermont Extension guide puts radishes, carrots and beets in the ground two to three weeks before the frost-free date, and beans, sweet corn and summer squash on or after it. With a last frost on April 20, the radish strips start on April 6 (two weeks earlier) and run April 13, April 20 and April 27. The bean strips start on April 20 and run April 30, May 10 and May 20.

Step 4: Lay out a worked schedule for a 4 by 8 bed

A 4 by 8 foot bed is 32 square feet. Cut it into eight strips, each 1 foot by 4 feet, so every strip is 4 square feet. One sowing fills one strip.

Give radish the first four strips and bush beans the last four. Day 0 is the day you sow each crop's first strip. The radish sowings fall on days 0, 7, 14 and 21. The bean sowings fall on days 0, 10, 20 and 30.

The same schedule as a table, in the order you do the work:

Give each crop its own day 0 instead of a shared one. You sow each crop when your frost dates allow it, and that day starts its count.

The bed holds eight sowings, four of each crop, and the last one goes in on day 30. That makes 8 strips of 4 square feet each, and 30 days from the first sowing to the last.

Once a strip is harvested, clear it and plant something new. A Mississippi State Extension guide gives the pattern of an early planting of English peas followed by cucumbers, then fall bush beans, leafy greens or late southern peas. The New Hampshire Info Line says early cabbage and broccoli can be followed by snap beans or zucchini, and spring lettuce, radishes and spinach by carrots or beets.

Feed the soil too. The New Hampshire note says to remove all weeds and crop residues before a second planting, then refertilize as you would for an early spring planting and work the fertilizer into the soil. Look up each crop's days to harvest on your seed packet to know when the strip is free.

Step 5: Adjust for heat, frost and your freezer

Heat and cold change the plan. Summer lettuce calls for heat-tolerant varieties, according to the Kentucky article. It also says succession planting needs planning and sometimes a change of variety to match days to maturity or heat and cold tolerance.

Write the new dates on the plan when the weather moves them. A plan you cannot correct is a plan you stop reading.

Preserving changes the answer. The Kentucky article says gardeners who want to preserve should give more space to larger plantings that share roughly the same harvest date. Planning to can beans in one weekend? Then one big sowing is the better plan.

Gluts and gaps come from one habit. Mississippi State advises planting only as much as your family can eat before the next planting begins to produce. Its guide also says that if you plan to can or freeze, you should plant larger amounts at one time. A gap means the next strip went in late, so move its date earlier on the plan.

A succession chart also has a limit. Your own state extension service may publish a succession table for your county, and that one is the better pick. It knows your frost dates and your heat better than any general chart.

Free state tables and your own strip sketch are enough if one or two crops are all you track. If you want the dates and strips already laid out, The Winter Plan has a succession waves page of 18 rows with intervals, plus bed plans drawn at 1 inch to 1 foot. Every date counts from the last-frost date you write in, and a table of freeze dates for 108 NOAA stations (1991 to 2020 normals) comes in the file, so it fits any US zone. Payment sends the download link straight to your email. The zip holds US Letter and A4 PDFs to print at 100 percent (actual size) on a home printer. You tick each sowing in the season calendar's day boxes, which hold three months a page, and note the next strip's date there when a crop ends.