Videos about Methods, Tools & Supplies from Johnny's

Planting a Fall Garden Bed • Mid-Summer Succession Planting

Hi, I'm Niki Jabbour, and it's early July in my garden and I found myself with an empty raised bed. It was planted with spring greens like Salanova® lettuces, arugula and spinach, but they've all been harvested and it's time to plant something else. In this video, I want to talk about mid-summer succession planting and how to figure out the best crops to plant for your region. Let's get started.

Succession planting, which is essentially following one crop with another, is all about maximizing the productivity of your garden. It ensures a steady supply of high quality produce for the longest possible period. To be successful with succession planting. You need to know the length of your growing season. This is the period between the last frost in spring and the first frost in autumn. In my Halifax, Nova Scotia garden, my growing season is about 20 weeks long or 140 days. And since it's now early July, I have about 12 or 13 weeks left, or 84 to 91 days. So I have to select vegetables with a days to maturity that's less than this time frame. For example, this is 'Trilogy Mix' bush beans, which has a days to maturity of 55 days, so it's perfect for mid-summer succession planting in my garden.

  • 'Trilogy Mix' Bush beans yield delicious and beautiful mixture of green, yellow and purple snap beans.
  • I also have time to get an early maturing cucumber in the ground like 'Quirk', which has a days to maturity of just 52 days, or Cool Customer, which needs 55 days from seed to harvest.
  • I also want to enjoy a late summer and autumn harvest of carrots. I'm excited to grow 'Glow Stix Moonrise Mix', a beautiful blend of orange, yellow, red, and purple varieties that all mature at about the same time.
  • This is also a great time to get more Swiss chard in the garden, and I have two varieties I'm going to plant. 'Peppermint', one of my favorites, as well as 'Heart of Gold', a bolt resistant variety with beautiful dark green leaves and golden orange petioles.
  • I'm also going to plant some 'Boldor' beets because you can't have enough beets.
  • And because I love to plant flowers with my veggies, I'm going to sow a few sunflower seeds. I have packets of 'Sunrich Gold' which has brilliant yellow petals and 'Chocolate', a tall, branching variety with deep Burgundy blooms.

To make planting quick and easy. I'm going to use the Row Pro™. This makes perfect furrows for my bean, carrot, and Swiss chard seeds. As the seeds sprout and the young plants grow, I’ll thin as needed to prevent overcrowding.

I want to fit as many veggies as I can in this bed, so I'm going to grow the cucumbers vertically on a wire cage.

As for the sunflowers, I'm going to sow a few seeds along the back of the bed so they won't shade the other crops as they grow.

Okay, the bed is now planted. I'm going to give it a good watering, and then I'm going to continue to maintain a lightly moist soil to encourage good germination and seedling growth.

As the plants grow, I continue to water as needed and remove any weeds that pop up. And if your plants are growing too close together, be sure to thin them.

This thinning of Glow Stix Moonrise Mix carrots has resulted in a delicious harvest of baby roots. Love the gorgeous colors.

Fast forward and it's now mid-autumn and I've been enjoying these high quality root vegetables. The carrots are ready to pull, and the bold colors make for a beautiful, as well as delicious, harvest. As for the Boldor beats, the plants have strong, vigorous tops as well as glowing golden roots.

You can harvest when the roots reach the desired size, anywhere from baby sized to full sized. You know, I think a beet salad will make a perfect lunch for today. Happy growing!

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