Getting More from the Garden: Succession Planting and Intercropping - Ep. 233

[00:00:00] If you have struggled in the past with how to fit all the plants that you want to grow into the space that you have available for gardening, you are not alone. It's probably the number one question that I get from clients when I step into their yards. How do I lay out all my plants so they all fit? And by the time we're done, they are usually pretty surprised by how many plants they can actually fit, and this is always accomplished by using intercropping and succession planting.

[00:00:27] This is not something that is intuitive or easy to figure out without a lot of trial and error, so don't feel bad if you've tried it several times and you just don't feel like you've gotten the hang of it yet. But there is a step-by-step process that you can use to get yourself off to a really good start and then modify based on your specific garden conditions. It's how I have managed to grow food for hundreds of people every single season by only using a few acres of garden space on our farm.

[00:00:57] It's how I teach my clients and my students to find space in the garden where they didn't think it existed. Today on Just Grow Something, I will guide you through a step-by-step process for mapping out your garden to not only ensure a productive season, but to find space for more plants through intercropping and succession planting. Whether you're a beginner or have a few seasons under your belt, this method will help you plan efficiently and maximize your harvest. Let's dig in.

[00:01:27] Hey, I'm Karen. I started gardening in a small corner of my suburban backyard and now 18 years later, I've got a degree in horticulture and operate a 40-acre market farm. I believe there is power in food and that everyone should know how to grow at least a little bit of their own. On this podcast, I share evidence-based techniques to help you plant, grow, harvest, and store all your family's favorites. Consider me your friend in the garden. So grab your garden journal and a cup of coffee and get ready to just grow something.

[00:01:55] Really quick, I want to share an email with you that I got from one of your fellow gardeners and I asked permission to share this email because I was just so very touched by it.

[00:02:19] And this email was sent to me by Kathy Carruthers and she sent this in response to the episode that we did a couple weeks ago on finding your why in the garden. And I'm glad that she allowed me to share this with you because I was very touched by it and I hope that you feel the same way. The email says, good morning, Karen. Why? Your question brings back such memories. Thank you. My dad planted 12 tomatoes in 1954.

[00:02:47] I was three years old. A hard frost made him think they were dead. So he planted 12 more. That summer, all 24 produced like crazy. The area had once been a horse corral. As a three-year-old, the plants towered over me. My mom canned them. We would sit at the table. She chopped tomatoes and I ate peas. And there were still too many. He took a box of tomatoes to the church every day.

[00:03:15] People would swing by on their way home and walk straight to the box. They all had a small smile of anticipation as they came in. They would take enough for food and sometimes for canning. It was a big box. When they greeted me, they were happy. The tomatoes built community. People felt cared for. Some of my mom's wisdom that applies to many areas of life came from the garden. Don't neglect the harvest. A little bit of effort every day.

[00:03:43] Plenty is good, my mom would say. From my garden, my plums go to friends. Friends and neighbors make jam and cider and give it to more friends. All the neighbors come by when I call and list off the produce I have too much of. They spend an hour in the open air. Some of my boxes and their jars go to the homeless program downtown. Food reduces the six degrees of separation. Sending a hug. Caffeine.

[00:04:13] So I don't think there's a whole lot that I can say about that. I really appreciate that response. And hopefully a lot of you had those same sort of feelings and thinking about the why behind why you garden. It doesn't necessarily need to be purely about subsistence. I know a lot of us are gardening because we're trying to reduce the food budget and we're trying to contribute to our family.

[00:04:37] But I really do think that gardening can be so many things to us, not just providing a food, but a way to connect to community and a way also to improve our mental health. James Beshara, the founder of Magic Minds said that he thinks when it comes to mental health, our society approaches it like we did with physical health 50 years ago. We only think about it when something goes wrong.

[00:05:05] But in reality, we would benefit from investing in our mental health like we invest in anything else in our lives. Magic Mind is on a mission in 2025 to help us build our mental wealth by focusing on five key pillars. Sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, and exogenous compounds. All of these things fit together. If you're stressed out, go out in the garden and get some fresh air and you'll likely feel better.

[00:05:35] If you don't, maybe you're not getting enough sleep. They all act on each other. Magic Mind has released a sleep elixir as a companion to their original mental focus shot. It's lavender and lemon balm and passionflower and chamomile and zero melatonin. And I am a big fan because my sleep is very important to me.

[00:05:58] It's the only way that I can comfortably accomplish everything that I need to do in a day and be able to recover from the physical activity that I put myself through. Magic Mind is offering you 45% off a bundle with their mental performance shot and Magic Mind sleep. So mental focus all day and fall asleep faster and get deeper rest at the end of the day.

[00:06:22] All of their ingredients are third-party tested, sourced from the best suppliers, and they donate five cents for every bottle sold to mental health charities that help U.S. homeless communities. I think that shows commitment to mental wealth. To get this special bundle for both morning and night, mental performance and sleep performance, and get 45% off, go to magicmind.com slash growsomethingjan.

[00:06:51] Yes, growsomethingjan is in growsomethingjanuary. And click the pop-up for the special coupon to apply at checkout. The link will be in the show notes. And as a reminder, my Plan Like a Pro garden planning course is open for registration. And now is the time to join if you want to have access to a live training session and Q&A with me in the first week in February,

[00:07:16] along with having me review your garden plan and give recommendations and answer all your planning questions in our course community. So justgrowsomethingpodcast.com slash pro is where to go to find all the information, and the link to that will be in the episode description. The technique that I am talking about today is something that we spend a lot of time defining in that course, and that is for very good reason.

[00:07:41] So by the end of this episode, you will know how to plot your crops on your garden map or in a spreadsheet and how to find interplanting and succession planting opportunities within the garden so that you can maximize the number of plants that you can fit without jeopardizing your yield. So when we're getting started with this, you want to be sure that you kind of have all the tools on hand that you need.

[00:08:09] So the first thing would be multiple blank copies of your garden map or the spreadsheet or whatever tool it is that you use to lay out your garden. Multiple blank copies is key here. You also should have a wish list of what you want to grow, regardless of the space that you think you have. Just, you know, throw it out there, make your absolute end-all be-all list, and we will work with it.

[00:08:33] And then you also want the number of plants or seeds that you calculated that you'll need to achieve your harvest goals based on what we talked about in last week's episode. And then you're also going to want to have some sort of a plant spacing chart handy, whether that's the MU guide from last week or some other easy-to-reference chart that you can use to figure out how much room all of these plants are going to need.

[00:08:59] So our first step is to plan out our cool season crops. Okay, so obviously cool season, these are ones that thrive in cooler temperatures. We're not going based on a calendar here. For most of us, yes, these are usually planted in the early spring or later in the fall, but this step is going to be flexible based on your climate. So if you're one of my Southern California growers, these are things that you're actually likely planting now,

[00:09:28] things I couldn't even dream of planting in January in Missouri. I mean, there's so much snow out my window right now, forget about it. So this is whatever the cool season is for you. But these crops are all going to be about the same. Things like leafy greens, so your lettuce or your spinach or your kale, root vegetables like carrots or radishes or beets, and then all of your brassicas, so broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage. These are all your cool season crops.

[00:09:54] And you're going to start by listing your cool season crops separately from your warm season. So you're going to have two separate lists. And then for your cool season crops, write down the number of plants or seeds that you have calculated you will need for each of these crops. So maybe it's 20 spinach plants or it's a single packet of carrots, whatever it is. And then look at your spacing chart.

[00:10:21] And next to each one of those crops and the number of plants that you'll need, write down the recommended spacing for each one of those crops. So, you know, next to your carrots, it would be two to three inches. Next to your lettuce, it would be six to 12 inches, whatever it is. Then we're going to take a blank copy of the garden map, and we're going to begin placing these cool season crops on the map.

[00:10:43] So, use the spacing recommendations to plan how many plants or seeds are going to fit in each bed while you are referencing the number of plants that you calculated you will need. So, if you have a four by eight bed, you could fit approximately 96 carat plants in there if you're doing them in rows that are spaced 12 inches apart. But you might not need that many. If you decided that you only need 60 carat plants, then just plot those 60 carats out in that bed,

[00:11:13] and you will have a visual of how much space that you still have to work with for other plants in that same bed. And then just keep doing this until all of your cool season plants have a home or you have completely filled up all of your beds. While you're doing this, keep some things in mind. Make sure that all of the crops that you are placing have the light that they need. So, if you have some tall growing ones,

[00:11:41] make sure that they are not overshadowing your lower growing ones. And then decide if you are going to plant all of your cool season crops in the spring or at the beginning of whatever your cool season is, or if you'll save some for a second planting in the fall. So, again, my warm climate gardeners, you may only have one chance at a cool season. So, you know your answer here. But for everybody else, do you want all 60 carats harvested at the beginning of the year?

[00:12:10] That's like 12 pounds of carrots, and you'll need to store them right away in the early summer. Or do you want to plant 30 of those carrots in the spring and use them throughout the summer and then plant another 30 in the fall to store up for winter, okay? This is the first way that we find space in the garden. This is a split succession. So, candidates for split successions are cool season crops

[00:12:38] that take about 60 to 90 days to reach maturity. They're not really candidates for getting, like, multiple plantings in the same plot in one season, but they can usually be planted twice per year in each of the shoulder seasons to increase your overall yield. This is how we start to find space. So, if you can split some of your plantings up between those two seasons, that is going to give you a little bit more room

[00:13:07] to work with for maybe some of those crops that you maybe couldn't find a space for, right? So, look at those crops to see which ones you could actually split up in order to give yourself some more room for the things that you want to grow. Now, if you're planning on a lot of different split successions, you may need to actually make a second copy of your cool season map just to make sure that you have them all accounted for, especially if not all of your cool season crops are going to be planted twice.

[00:13:36] You want to be able to kind of track things to make sure that you have met that number that you decided was what you needed for your harvest, okay? Once you have all of that laid out, then we move on to step two, which is planning your warm season crops. So, of course, these are the ones that thrive in the warmer temperatures and they are planted after our last frost or when the average soil temperature gets above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. So, if you're one of my warm season gardeners

[00:14:04] or you're in a frost-free area, this is what you want to look for. So, temperatures, the soil temperature should be above 50 Fahrenheit or 10 Celsius for planting and then it all should, you should have an average minimum air temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit or 24 Celsius for proper growth. So, these are your things like tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash, cucumbers, melons, your beans, your corn, all of your warm season stuff.

[00:14:32] You're going to do the same thing here that you did with your cool season. So, list your warm season crops that you plan on growing and the numbers of them that you plan to grow. Six tomato plants, 10 cucumber plants, whatever it is, and then note the spacing for each one of those crops from whatever chart you're using. So, tomatoes, if you're staking them, need, you know, about 18 to 24 inches apart. Cucumbers need about 12 to 18 inches apart if they're growing up a trellis.

[00:15:02] Then you're going to take a fresh blank copy of your garden map and you're going to start placing your warm season crops. Now, don't worry about what's going on in your cool season stuff, okay? Just focus on where those warm season crops are going to fit using those spacing guidelines and considering their growth habits. So, whether or not they're a vining plant or something that's low-growing and sprawling or something that's growing up a trellis, okay?

[00:15:30] Keep in mind your vertical space. So, are you training those vining crops like cucumbers and pole beans on trellises to save space? Once again, consider the sunlight. Make sure that the crops like tomatoes are in the full sun and, you know, you're not blocking some of the other low-growing ones with that sunlight, unless you're doing that intentionally. We'll talk about that here in a minute. And then once again, there may be some plants that you want to grow

[00:15:58] that have fewer days to maturity than you have growing days in the summer and you have the opportunity to plant these again. So, for warm season plants, these once again are those crops that mature between 60 and 90 days. These can be planted multiple times during warmer weather to get a bigger yield or to make room. So, these are excellent candidates for splitting up your plantings

[00:16:26] to either get a continuous harvest rather than one large one only one time or multiple smaller plantings for like fresh use plus then one large plot at the end if you wanted to preserve something. So, things like sweet corn, green beans, cucumbers, summer squashes and determinate tomatoes are all things that are candidates for succession plantings. The other part to this too is that if you have crops

[00:16:55] that are prone to failure, succession plantings of those crops can also give you the possibility of getting more out of the garden. Zucchini, okay? You can plant zucchini in two-week intervals to ensure you get a continuous harvest if your first plants succumb to pest or disease. This is very, very common here where we are in West Central Missouri and I think in the Midwest in general where squash bugs and vine boars

[00:17:25] and cucumber beetles are like the bane of our existence when it comes to growing zucchini and yellow squash and even our winter squashes. But for zucchini and yellow squashes, they mature quickly enough that we can plant every couple of weeks so that we know if that first crop and I shouldn't say if, when that first crop gets taken out, the second one is coming to maturity and we'll get a little bit of a harvest out of that one and we may have planted a third succession to make sure

[00:17:54] that we actually get a crop out of all three of those. And once again, these successions are also a way where you can find more room in your garden, in your mat, okay? Which brings me to step number three and that is interplanting. If you're having problems finding a spot for all of your plants at this stage, even if you are breaking them up into different succession plantings, here is where interplanting or intercropping comes into play.

[00:18:24] Look at the plants that you want to grow and figure out how they grow. Are they taller plants? Do they vine across the ground? Do they need staking or trellising? Or do they have like a bush type habit? We're going to look at those tall and short plants and figure out how to tuck them all in together to make the most use of our space. This is another way where we can find

[00:18:53] extra space for the plants that may not have initially fit into our garden mat. So my rule is high, low, fast, slow. You are going to match tall plants that like lots of sun with short ones that might appreciate a little bit of afternoon shade. You're going to pair fast maturing plants that will come out of the garden quickly with more slow maturing ones that won't take up their whole space until after that first one has been

[00:19:23] harvested. Okay? Think about that just a little bit as you're looking at all these plants. We can start by doing this within the same season. So for instance, sugar snap peas and spinach are both planted in the cooler shoulder seasons. Generally around here, it's the early spring. So once the peas sprout and start to grow up a trellis, the spinach can be planted at the base. The spinach

[00:19:52] acts as a ground cover and it chokes out the weeds and it keeps the soil cool while the peas are fixing nitrogen into that soil to help with the leafy growth of the spinach. So as long as the peas are planted on the north side of the spinach, they're not going to shade the spinach and impede their growth. Although, I have run my peas on a trellis that goes north to south and planted spinach on both the east and west sides of that trellis and it's just done fine. I just grew a little bit more slowly, that's all.

[00:20:22] But that's just one example of how you can interplant your crops together in the same season and make more space for more plants. You can do the same thing with something that might be in the season a little bit longer. So we can think about that same spinach crop but maybe pair it with something that grows through the summertime like a pole bean. So you might actually plant the spinach first and let it get established and then about two weeks before

[00:20:52] your last frost date pop those seeds into the ground for the pole beans. Once the pole beans start to get tall and start to climb up that trellis you'll be harvesting that spinach and getting out of there. Well once the temperatures start to get too warm that spinach is going to want to bolt and so you're going to get it out of the garden anyway and that's going to leave a ton of space for those pole beans to continue to grow through the entire rest of the year. You just got two crops in one space so both of these

[00:21:22] examples will work one of them will be during the finite kind of period in the spring where both of those crops are going to end up coming out and you can put something else in in their place in the warm season or you can have two crops that grow together one that grows slowly that's your pole beans and one that grows quickly that's your spinach you get the spinach out of there and that allows the pole beans to continue growing for the entire remainder of the season. So long as you

[00:21:52] keep the proper spacing for each plant within its family you can tuck others in to take advantage of those gaps which also helps with the weeds. So I have planted green onions between my lettuce plants so you've got one that's high and one that's low right I have done lettuce among my cabbages one's fast the other is slow you do radishes in between your carrots right

[00:22:21] one's fast one's slow there are a ton of different options here now there is another way that we can expand the number of plants across all of the seasons but we have to combine our maps first to see where those opportunities are so step four is combining our cool season and our warm season maps thus far we have been treating our maps like they are stand-alone gardens the cool season on one map the warm season on another

[00:22:51] but at some point there is going to be an overlap with these plants we can't wait for all the spring crops to be harvested in the early summer before we get our summer plants in the garden or the summer plants won't produce early enough and then we won't have any ring for the fall plants to go in and on and on it goes right so once we have all of our plants fitting in somewhere on our maps we are going to combine those maps this is how we figure out what plants will need to be

[00:23:21] interplanted with others and the key to this is knowing when the plants should ideally be planted in your region and how long they take to get to maturity so once again I have a handy chart for you that I am pulling out of the plan like a pro course to help you with this it lists the most common vegetable crops for home gardeners and their average days to maturity and it's broken down by whether they are considered a cool season or warm season crop

[00:23:51] so some of this work is going to be done for you just grow something podcast dot com slash maturity I will link it in the show notes so you don't have to remember that and it's also in this morning's email for your convenience if you are on the newsletter download that chart and we will use that chart to determine just how long these plants are going to be in place in your garden and then we're going to look at your maps okay look for gaps in your cool season crop layout where plants will

[00:24:21] finish early these are even your green onions these are all your short season plants you can either choose to plant these a second time as a quick succession to kind of improve the amount of your harvest or you can plan to fill these gaps

[00:24:51] with warm season crops to continue your season so most of the candidates for replacing your fast maturing plants are summer crops that are going to require longer than 90 days to reach maturity so these are things like your indeterminate tomatoes your peppers things like brussel sprouts that take over 100 days to grow winter squashes right so for example you might finish up your crop of lettuce and replace it with sweet potatoes that will be in

[00:25:21] that bed until the first frost or whenever you decide to pull them or once you pull your arugula you can plant okra in its place but the timeline won't be necessarily that neat you may not have the number of growing degree days necessary to do one crop after another like that and that's where the intercropping comes back into play so I've used this example numerous times but that's because I do this

[00:25:50] every year and it is wildly effective lettuce to tomatoes back to lettuce if I were to wait to plant my tomatoes until my lettuce was mature and out of the garden my tomatoes would be going in three weeks later than I want them to that shortens my harvest window and since tomatoes keep going until the first frost there's no time to put anything else in its place at the end of the season so I interplant them tomatoes and lettuce mature in opposite

[00:26:20] seasons so starting with lettuce in the early spring and then interplanting the tomatoes as the lettuce matures and is removed in the late spring and then adding the lettuce back into the understory again in the fall saves space without reducing the harvest you don't have to wait for one crop to vacate the bed before planting the next one if you are strategic about it in your planning you can take the time right now

[00:26:50] to lay all of this out and take the guesswork out of what's going to go where in the garden and figure out how to fit it in so that you have so many more plants using intercropping and succession planting so if you have struggled with how to fit all your plants in these steps should put you well on your way to fitting them all in and knowing what plants should go into the garden at what time let's recap that process the first thing you want to do

[00:27:19] list those cool and warm season considering what the plant needs and all of their spacing combine those two maps to identify where your succession and your interplanting opportunities are and then we're going to transfer all those tasks to your gardening calendar oh wait we didn't talk about the calendar that's because that's what we're

[00:27:49] talking about next week my final step for planning out your garden so that you don't miss any tasks along the way but you'll have to wait for that until next week if you want step by step lessons on how to do all of this jump into the plan like a course and get all the guidance that you until January 31st and don't forget

[00:28:19] to grab your magic mine morning and night bundle at magic mine dot com slash grow something jan until next time my gardening friends keep on cultivating and planning that dream garden and we'll talk again soon