Early Season Succession Crops

After preparing the beds and soil, we began planting. We started with early crops –carrots, lettuce, radish, beets, spinach, and kale– which were direct seeded into the ground. These were planted in successions. What this means is that we planted one row of each, then about two weeks later, we planted a second row of each. What this does is ensure that we get a longer harvest: instead of all our carrots being ready at once, a first crop will be ready, then a couple weeks later the second crop will be ready.

We also practiced inter-cropping in these early beds, particularly with the carrots and radishes. Carrots are a relatively slow growing crop, while radishes are one of the fastest in the garden. Because of this, they are great crops to share a bed: the radishes are up and ready to harvest before the carrots really need any space. We harvest the radishes just as the carrots begin to need some more room.

Today, the radishes are just about big enough to start to pick. They need to be thinned soon, so that they have enough space to get bigger. The carrots are still tiny little seedlings. The first succession of lettuce is a few inches tall, and it too needs to be thinned. The early succession of spinach has its first true leaves. ("True leaves" are the second set of leaves that appear when a seedling emerges. (In grass crops it is a single leaf that appears from the seed, not a set of two leaves as with all other plants.) The first set of leaves to appear are called cotyledon leaves, because they are actually the two interior halves –or cotyledons– of the seed. The "true" leaves are called this because they look like what we typically recognize as a spinach or carrot leaf.) The beets are a couple inches tall and also need to be thinned. The lettuce and the beets will wait to be thinned until they are a bit bigger so that the removed little leaves can become a salad– they are still just a bit too small for that now.