SUCCESSION PLANTING is the term gardeners use to refer to planting something else in place when a previous crop is all finished.

To pull this off effectively, you need a few things:

1. A diagram of your garden with zones marked off and numbered/lettered/named for old boyfriends, whatever…

The one above is of four of my beds 4×4 each–entirely one veggie for the first three and 2×2 blocks of different veggies in the last one.

2. Your Spring and Fall Garden Planners that tell you what you can plant when.

3. A CHART! (BTW, one of you lovely readers asked me to do this. How could I turn down another opportunity to make a chart? I LUV charts!)

If you want to print the pdf and fill it out by hand, click here.
If you want to download my Excel spreadsheet and type/customize it, click here.

How to Use Ivory’s Awesome Chart

A. On the left side, fill in your frost dates for spring and fall and write in the dates for the rest of the weeks. (copy from your planners.)

B. Notice that there is a gray area between Fall and Spring. That’s where the seasons overlap. It’s just “carrots, bush beans, and lettuce” over and over and over and over…. Depending on your dates there will be more or less weeks in your ‘gray area.’ (On mine, there are seven weeks between where spring left off and fall picked up.)


C. Put your garden section labels at the top.


D. And write in the blanks what you planted, and when.

E. Check the lists at the bottom of the chart and find out how long each crop will be in the ground.



F. Here’s the best part!!!

Just move down that number of weeks on the sheet and check your planner to see what you can plant.

Then repeat until FROST!

YAY!


Ivory

P.S. I need professional help, don’t I?

P.P.S. Actually, I already have professional help…must be a permanent condition.