When I first started gardening, one practice I come to be keen to adopt became succession planting. The concept is easy enough: at the same time as one crop stops producing, you pull out the flowers and placed new ones inside the identical vicinity. Logically, this seems like it would notably growth the amount you could expand in a given region. My first few attempts at it, however, had been singularly unimpressive. I attempted to plant butternut squash and pumpkins within the area in which my snow peas had been?But due to the fact the snow peas did not begin producing till June and kept producing till the begin of August, the squash flora went in past due and in no way definitely produced something. I attempted planting cabbages and spinach in August, and they never came up. Eventually, I determined the entire concept modified into just more trouble than it have become really worth. I'd certainly set apart a given quantity of squares for every crop and plant it at the perfect time, and if that meant that factors of the garden ended up sitting empty for a while, so be it.
This method has without a doubt stored me quite some problem, and it is made it a exquisite deal less tough to broaden positive flora. This 12 months, for example, we had been given our butternut squash down great and early in mid-May, and as a give up end result, we had been capable of start harvesting them in August (with loads greater although at the vines to see us thru the autumn). However, once I study a chunk of penning this week approximately
The lettuce was easy; I still had plenty of seeds left over in the packet of Tom Thumb Baby Bibb lettuce I started this spring (I had some other varieties too, but none I liked nearly as well). However, since I hadn't actually planned on growing any spinach this year after my marked lack of success in the past, I hadn't bought any new spinach seeds. A quick rummage through the seed bin turned up a few unused or half-used packets, but they were all several years old. I had two opened packets of "Bloomsdale Long Standing" spinach, one from 2008 and one from 2009, neither of which had actually given us a crop; there was also one unopened packet of "Harmony" spinach that I didn't actually remember buying. (Most likely I acquired it on Freecycle and then forgot I had it.) "Bloomsdale Long Standing" had only mediocre ratings on the "Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners" site at Cornell, and I certainly hadn't had any luck with it in the past, so I decided to go with the Harmony.
Unfortunately, spinach seeds don't tend to last long in storage; the Extension Office at Oregon State University says you can't expect them to keep much beyond one season. So it was likely my four-year-old seeds would be kaput, or at least would have a significantly lower germination rate than new seeds. But still, since I wasn't going to use the seeds for anything else, and I wasn't going to use the space for anything else, what did I have to lose by trying? Rather than planting just nine individual seeds per square foot, I decided to scatter pretty much the whole packet over a three-square-foot area. That way, even if only one in ten of them actually sprouted, I'd have a reasonable chance of getting enough plants to fill the space.
So my new seeds have been planted, covered over with dirt, and watered. Now there's not much to do except wait (and pop back there every now and then to pull any weeds that try to pop in in that spot). We might not succeed in growing any fall greens, but at least it won't be for lack of trying.
