A simple succession planting plan example runs one bed through three crops in a single year. You plant a cool-season crop in spring. You follow it with a warm-season crop in summer. Then you close with another cool-season crop in fall. You pull each crop when it finishes, plant the next one right away, and repeat. One bed gives you three harvests instead of one. Below is a real plan you can copy, plus two sourced sequences that follow the same pattern.
My south-fence raised bed handed me three separate harvests in one season once I ran it this way. Spring lettuce filled it from March through May. The week the lettuce bolted, I dropped in bush beans and picked them all summer. By late August I cleared the spent vines and sowed fall spinach, which fed us into November. The year before, that same bed sat bare from late June on, after I pulled one round of lettuce and let the soil bake empty for the rest of the year.
The structure behind it is a three-season rotation. You move from a cool-season crop, to a warm-season crop, and back to a cool-season crop in the same soil. Cool crops like lettuce and spinach handle the chilly shoulders of the year. Warm crops like beans take the hot middle. That arc is what turns your single bed into a three-season garden rather than a spring-only one. You get more food from the same square footage, and the soil never sits idle.
Two trusted university plans use the same shape. You can lift either one straight into your own bed.
University of Maryland: Lettuce, Beans, Broccoli
- Spring slot: Lettuce goes in first as the cool-season opener and comes out when the weather warms up.
- Summer slot: Bush beans take the bed through the heat, then finish and clear by late summer.
- Fall slot: Broccoli closes the year as a second cool-season crop in the same space.
University of Georgia: Lettuce, Sweet Potatoes, Spinach
- Spring slot: Lettuce again opens the bed during the cool early months.
- Summer slot: Sweet potatoes run through the long warm stretch and use the full heat of summer.
- Fall slot: Spinach wraps up the season, giving you three crops in one space across the year.
My South-Fence Bed: Lettuce, Bush Beans, Spinach
- Spring slot: Lettuce ran from March through May, then bolted as the days warmed.
- Summer slot: Bush beans went in the same week and produced right through the heat.
- Fall slot: Spinach took over in late August and fed us until November.
All three follow the same cool-warm-cool shape. The crops change, but the crop rotation in one bed stays the same: pull, replant, repeat. You can swap the middle crop for whatever warm-season pick you like, and the plan still holds. If you grow tomatoes or peppers, slot them into the summer spot instead of beans. The cool-season bookends do the heavy lifting, so your warm crop has room to breathe.
To build your own, grab a sheet of paper and draw one bed with three slots. Label them spring, summer, and fall. Pick a cool crop for slot one. Pick a warm crop for slot two. Pick a second cool crop for slot three. Lettuce then beans then spinach is a safe starter set if you want one. Write each crop in its slot so you can see the whole year at a glance.
Keep your timing rough for now. Matching each slot to your local frost dates is its own detailed step, so save the careful date math for that. Your goal here is the map, not the calendar. Start with one bed, one season, and three crops. That single sheet of paper is your whole plan, and you can reuse it every year.
Read the full article: Succession Planting: A Complete Guide
