OUT CAME THE EARLIEST ARUGULA, the last of the spinach, and one early row of peas is fading fast. Lamentable? Perhaps–but also reason for hope, as each precious portion of a plot that opens up is a chance for another crop. It’s time for succession sowing like mad over here in the vegetable garden, and here’s my strategy for ensuring multiple harvests.
THE LECTURE that he’s been giving for a number of years is not-so-subtly called “Kill Your Lawn.” Ecological horticulturist Dan Jaffe Wilder knows that starting over and creating an entire native habitat instead of a lawn isn’t for everyone. But Dan just wants to grab our attention and get us to start to make some changes at least in the way we care for the turfgrass we do want in our landscapes. And maybe give up a little square footage of it to some other kind of more diverse planting, too, like the wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana, inset). Alternative, more eco-focused styles of lawn care, along with some lawn alternatives is what he and I talked about on the podcast. Dan is Director of Applied Ecology at Norcross Wildlife Foundation in Wales, Massachusetts, and its 8,000-acre sanctuary. He’s also co-author with Mark Richardson of the book “Native Plants for New England Gardens.”
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This is great advice. After 4.5 years of vegetable gardening I feel this is the next area for me to conquer: succession sowing (also for the future: cold frames). I seem to get lazy with gardening by mid-summer, but having a written plan may help spur me to action!
After inheriting 4 acres of weeds from my non gardening father we have been tackling the garden for the past 2 years and jugling it all with horticultural studies and we are finally ready to tackle the ultimate…”food gardening”. Its funny how someone who has spent the last 3 years studying plants could be terrified by the prospect! We are not all natural gardeners and once we stepped into the foreign land of annuals and perennials we had to start learning all over again! We have the added problem of being penniless hippy students so money to buy everything that we need is few and far between and usually earmarked for something more important. We have rocks in abundance…so going vertical is the only option and we have possums, rabbits, wallabies, blackbirds and chickens all wanting more than their fair share of the loot so we have some added problems to tackle…couple that with my crazy ongoing idea of creating an edible food forest on the property and you can see that we really have our work cut out for us. Its a pity that the blackberries and banana passionfruit are major weeds or we might just leave them and live off the fruit! ;)
I just wanted to thank you (despite the ranting lol) for that info about succession sowing. I am sure that it will come in incredibly handy in our future food gardening adventures :)
I am doing this for the first time this year. Down here we lose a lot to bugs and disease. I am planning on replacing squash (lost to svb) and tomatoes in Late July. I am also planting short rows of beans and field peas every 2 weeks!