The best vegetables for succession planting are the fast ones you can sow again and again. The short list is lettuce, radishes, spinach, beets, and bush beans. Each one grows quick and clears the bed in time for the next round. Plant a short row every two weeks and you get a steady harvest. You skip the one big glut that hits all at once and then leaves you with nothing.
My south-fence raised bed handed up lettuce, radishes, and bush beans in waves from May through October. It started as one overstuffed lettuce row that bolted in a single warm week. I lost the whole row to bitter, leggy plants and got no salad at all. The next spring I planted the same space in three short blocks. I pulled the first radishes in under a month, and the bed never sat empty after that.
What ties these crops together is a short days-to-maturity and a willingness to go right back in the ground. These quick-maturing crops finish in well under three months. So one bed can grow three or four rounds in a single season. A long-season crop blocks that same bed for the whole summer, which is why it cannot keep pace here. Cut-and-come-again greens add a second bonus on top of speed. You snip the outer leaves and the plant keeps pushing new ones from the center. That habit stretches each sowing for weeks past the first picking and doubles what one row gives you.
Greens and roots make up the cool season crops that anchor most succession plans. Radishes pull in as little as 25 days. That is the fastest payoff in the whole garden. Lettuce runs 35 to 65 days depending on the type, and spinach lands at 45 to 60 days. Beets sit close behind at 45 to 55 days. You also get the leafy beet tops as a bonus while the roots size up below the soil. These crops shrug off cool spring and fall weather, so they bookend the season on both ends.
Bush and green beans round out the list at 50 to 75 days. They love warm soil, so they fill the summer slot when your spring greens have called it quits. A fresh bean sowing every two to three weeks keeps the pods coming until the first frost. Bush types work better than pole types for this since they all crop at once and then clear the bed. Beans also fix nitrogen in the soil. They feed the bed for whatever crop you plant in that spot after them. That makes them a smart middle link in any rotation, right between your spring greens and a fall round of the same.
Start small with two or three of these crops your first year. Pick one fast root, one green, and beans. Then sow a short row of each every couple of weeks instead of one long row all at once. Short rows give you fresh food on a schedule and waste far less. A row of radishes can even share a bed with slower beets. The radishes come out long before the beets need the room, so the space does double duty.
Long-season crops like tomatoes do not fit tight replanting. They earn a steady harvest through the mixed-maturity method in the tomato question. Plant fast greens, roots, and beans in this plan instead.
Read the full article: Succession Planting: A Complete Guide
