Plan for year-round harvests
Sally Nex explains how to plan your new sowing year for non-stop crops
Organisation isn’t generally my strong suit – I’m the mum running up costumes for World Book Day an hour before school! But that all changes once I’m in the garden. Last-minute isn’t an option with veg: sow willy-nilly, as the mood takes you, and all you get is feast and famine. One day you have 20 lettuces ready to pick (lettuce soup, anyone?), then nothing else is ready for weeks, while you wait for the next batch to grow. Plan exactly what you’re growing and when though, and you’ll hit the Goldilocks spot, with just the right amount to pick all year round. Luckily the garden is on pause right now, so pour yourself a cup of tea, settle down in your favourite armchair and conjure the coming season into life.
I plan my whole year at once, from the tomatoes I’ll sow next month to the spring cabbages I hope to pick in March 2022, so nothing is left to chance. You can check sowing times at gardenersworld.com and use an online garden planner, such as gardenplanner. suttons.co.uk but a notebook does just as well – and won’t run out of battery!
Sketch out a plan of your veg growing area – I like to do 12 copies, one for each month of the year – then fill in which veg you’ll be growing where. That way, you can see at a glance what you’ll have growing at any given time and where there are gaps to plant new crops. Write in when you expect veg to be ready to harvest, and that’ll help you identify if you have too many similar vegetables all maturing at once, and highlight times when nothing will be ready, giving you time to plan some crops to fill that gap.
I do the two most difficult seasons first – winter and early spring, the notorious ‘hungry gap’ when only a few veg are at their best. Cater well for these trickier times and you’re already halfway to a year-round veg supply.
Where to start
First on my plan are early treats like spring cabbages and purple sprouting broccoli, then big brassicas for winter. They’ll grow slowly all year, from late spring onwards, so it’s important to make room for them from the start.
You can still use the same bed for summer veg – plant out your kale and sprouting broccoli first, 45-60cm apart, then fill in between with rows of smaller crops like lettuces, beetroot, kohlrabi and spinach, along with annual herbs such as chervil and parsley, sown direct, spaced 15cm apart. Once these summer crops are done, clear them away, creating space for the brassicas to grow and provide you with a second season of harvests from the same bed.
Getting your crops to follow on from each other like this is the secret to a constant supply of food from your plot. Sow in smaller quantities, regularly through the season, and one batch becomes ready to harvest as the previous one is finishing.
For fast-growing crops you eat often, such as baby-leaf salads, sowing once a month works well. Sow half a row each time, so you’ve got one half-row just sown, one that’s growing and
Plan what you’re growing when and you’ll hit the Goldilocks spot – with just the right amount to pick all year
one you’re harvesting. Once you eat through the first half-row, clear it and resow straight away.
Plan to sow crops like chard, carrots and dwarf French beans two or three times a year: in March/April, in June and a final batch in August. This gives pickings from early summer well into autumn. Add winter lettuces and hardier whitestemmed chard to your August sowings and your harvests will last until the following spring.
Plan in as much detail as you can, right down to the varieties you want to grow. Look out for early, mid-season and late varieties that mature at different rates, to spread your harvest further. And make space for a bit of fun too: exotic crops such as cucamelons or unusual varieties like purple potatoes keep things interesting.
Once your year is mapped out, make a sowing calendar, listing which veg to sow in each month, and hang it up in the potting shed where you can see it easily. Your last task is to organise your seed box, with seeds filed in the month you’ll be sowing them, so they’ll be to hand when you need them. Now you’re ship-shape and ready to go, with a blueprint for your best season ever!
Now is your golden hour – the peaceful few weeks before March arrives and you’re sowing like mad. Use the time well and you’ll be ready to go. Start by having a good clear-out of the shed. Get rid of out-of-date fertilisers and pesticides, and hang up your tools, after cleaning and sharpening the blades and oiling wooden handles with linseed. Gather pots and trays, sort them into size order and brush out any old compost. That’s usually enough, but if you had disease problems last year, scrub them with dilute disinfectant (one part disinfectant to nine parts water).
Make up a few trays of newspaper or cardboard pots, ready to grab and go in spring. With both of these, your seedlings can be planted out without removing the pot. They’re easy to make – see below for paper pots. For cardboard pots, cut a cross shape out of corrugated board, made up of four equal-sized squares around a central square. Fold up the sides and secure with paper masking tape to make an open-topped box.
Finally, set up your greenhouse or potting shed ready for sowing. If you have a propagator, check it’s clean and in good working order. And that’s it, you’re ready – roll on spring!
Seedlings in cardboard pots can be planted out without removing the pot