If you’ve ever had that one magical week where the garden is giving you exactly what you want - some lettuce, a few carrots, a handful of beans, a couple tomatoes - and then two weeks later you’re drowning in zucchini while everything else is kind of between harvests ...
Today we’re fixing that.
Because the goal for a lot of home gardeners isn’t “the biggest harvest possible on one weekend.” The goal is steady, usable harvests week after week so you’re actually eating from the garden regularly, without a sudden produce avalanche.
So today on Just Grow Something, I’m going to teach you a planning method that revolves around harvest windows.
Instead of only asking, “When do I plant this?” we’re going to ask:
“When do I want to be harvesting this, and do I want it over and over again?”
I’ll walk you through a simple framework and give you a few practical “rules of thumb” for how often certain crops can be re-planted or staggered to keep the harvest going.
Let's dig in!
References and Resources:
My Plan Like A Pro Course is Open for Registration: https://justgrowsomethingpodcast.com/pro
University of Missouri Extension — “Harvest all season long with succession sowing” : https://extension.missouri.edu/news/harvest-all-season-long-with-succession-sowing
University of Minnesota Extension — “Climate resilience resources for vegetable growers in Minnesota” (includes a “when to plant for continuous harvest” interval table): https://extension.umn.edu/vegetables/climate-resilience-resources-vegetable-growers-minnesota#strategy-3%3A-reduce-risks-from-warmer-and-drier-conditions-3571512
NC State Extension — Extension Gardener Handbook, Chapter 16 “Vegetable Gardening” (Succession planting: varieties with different maturity, repeat plantings, and filling in after harvest): https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/extension-gardener-handbook/16-vegetable-gardening
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Have you ever had that one magical week in the garden where
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it's giving you exactly what you want and what you need?
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Like just enough lettuce, a handful of carrots, some green
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beans, a couple of tomatoes, just what you need for the week,
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right? And then like two or three weeks
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later, you're absolutely drowning in zucchini and nothing
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else is doing anything? Yeah, today we're going to fix
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that because the goal for most home gardeners isn't the biggest
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possible harvest on one weekend, right?
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The goal is steady, usable harvests week after week so that
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we're actually eating from the garden regularly without like a
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sudden produce avalanche. I'm going to teach you a
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planning method that revolves around harvest windows.
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So instead of only asking when do I plant this, we're going to
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ask when do I want to be harvesting this and do I want it
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over and over again? I'm going to walk you through a
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simple framework and give you a few practical rules of thumb for
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how often certain crops can be replanted or staggered to keep
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the harvest going. Welcome back to just grow
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something. I'm Karen Velez, I grow
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specialty crops for a living. I've got a horticulture
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background and I help home gardeners build skills that last
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so you're not restarting from scratch every season.
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This podcast is your evidence based guide for the garden
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basics and the what do I do now? Moments from planting, planting,
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harvesting and storing to pests, weeds and disease, all explained
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in a way that you can actually use.
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Let's dig in. January is per prime planning
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season, and one of the best planning upgrades that you can
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make, especially if you want to eat from the garden steadily, is
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to plan your harvest timing on purpose.
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So we talk about this idea in a bunch of different ways.
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Stretching the season or continuous harvest, staggered
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planting, relay planting, succession sowing, right?
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Whatever you call it, the core concept is the same.
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A well planned garden isn't just a list of what you want to grow,
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it is a schedule. And preferably it is a schedule
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of harvests. So we're going to build a plan
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that supports that continuous harvest using harvest windows as
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the organizing system. A harvest window is basically
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just the span of time that you can reasonably expect to harvest
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a crop, Whether that is a really short window like radishes that
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come in all at once, or a longer window, something like tomatoes
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that usually keep on producing for weeks and weeks, sometimes
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months, or something that is a repeated window.
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So maybe lettuces where you can keep sewing small batches for
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fresh harvests over a longer period of time.
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Planning by harvest windows works because it forces two
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really important questions. How long will I be harvesting
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this crop once it starts? And if I want it again later,
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what is my plan to keep it coming?
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This matters because a seed packets days to maturity is only
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a part of the story for continuous harvest planning.
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We also care about the length of that harvest, plus how weather
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or seasonal changes speeds up or slows down that growth.
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Right. That is the big theme in
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continuous harvest scheduling. So if you've ever planted the
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garden and then wondered why your harvest feels overwhelming
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and unpredictable, harvest windows are how you smooth that
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out. A lot of gardeners plan like
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this. What do I want to grow?
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And then we figure out when do I plant it?
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OK, harvest window planning looks more like what do I want
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to be eating and when? Which then we figure out what
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needs to happen for that to be true.
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And that tiny little change is what turns our garden plan into
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something we can actually live with all season.
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And that works for our real life.
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I find planning in a way that stretches the harvest out across
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the season to be really, really effective.
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And so the garden produces over time instead of all at once.
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Now, how you do this have this plan, whether it's on paper or
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on a spreadsheet or on an app, that is entirely up to you and
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how you like to do things. I feel like the garden is very
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tactile before I am doing it by hand on pieces of paper, but
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whatever works for you. Either way, I'm going to give
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you a step by step process that starts with the harvest you want
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and then it works backwards. So step number one is to choose
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your core harvest crops. So last week we talked about
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picking your top ten list of crops for the garden and then
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maybe plus you're like experimental or peripheral ones
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right now. Let's use that list to pick a
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shorter list of the crops that you want to harvest
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continuously. Not everything needs to be a
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continuous harvest crop. Some things are fine to come on
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in a rush, especially if you like preserving.
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Some things you may not want all season.
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This is broccoli for me. I might want a little bit of
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broccoli in the spring and then maybe a little bit of broccoli
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in the fall, but it is certainly not something that I want to be
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harvesting or eating all season long.
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But for most home gardeners, there are usually a few core
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crops that you do want again and again.
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So this could be things like leafy greens or some specific
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herbs. Maybe green beans are your
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thing, or cucumbers. Maybe you really like, you know,
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carrots and beets and you can eat those all the time.
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Or for a lot of us, it's zucchini or maybe sweet corn if
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you grow it and you have the space for that.
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So out of that top ten list that you made of things that you want
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to grow, pick three to six crops from that list that you want to
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be harvesting steadily. OK.
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And then if you did the exercise last week where you marked their
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primary use, then look at that. And if not, OK, go ahead and
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mark them. Now.
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What is for fresh use, Meaning you want it for like weekly
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meals and what is for preserving?
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So maybe you want a bigger window for a bulk harvest,
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right? Or maybe you want a little bit
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of both. You can write both on there too.
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That one word descriptor is basically going to influence how
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often you replant and how much of this particular crop that you
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grow. And then the secret sauce to
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this is to also label each crop by its harvest style, because
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not all crops behave the same, right?
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So for harvest windows, we can sort of sort these crops into
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one of three categories. Category A would be those one
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and done harvests, right? These are crops that mostly
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harvest in a short burst. They basically come ready all at
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once. So radishes or head lettuces or
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root crops, if you harvest them all at once, like those carrots
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or those beets, right? Some broccoli types even,
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depending on how you harvest, the harvest window for these can
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be really short. So if you want them more than
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once, these are the ones that we plan.
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Succession plantings or relay plantings of.
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These are often what I call rapid succession crops or split
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successions. Either they mature very quickly
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and all at once or they can be planted multiple times but
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usually only like on the cooler shoulder seasons.
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So their succession is split across the season category B
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would be those cut and come again harvest.
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So these are your more study producers if you harvest them
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correctly. So like loose leaf lettuces or
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spinach, maybe kale or collards Chard, a lot of the herbs, these
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are the ones where you can stretch the harvest window by
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harvesting the outer leaves and that encourages the regrowth.
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And then you can also keep them going by doing staggered
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plantings. So these could be rapid
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successions or even mid range success, meaning they take a
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little bit longer to mature and the harvest window depends
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basically on how you are harvesting them.
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And then category C would be those long season producers.
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These are the ones that give you a longer harvest once they
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start. So think things like tomatoes
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and Peppers, Cucumbers. For a lot of us, that's summer
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squashes. If you're doing indeterminate
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pole beans. For these, a continuous harvest
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is often less about replanting the same crop repeatedly and
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more about making sure that we're planting them at the right
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time or we're choosing the right varieties.
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And sometimes it means using more than one variety with a
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different maturity timing. These are long season
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successions. These likely aren't going to be
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planted more than once unless you have special circumstances,
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but they might be good candidates to be relay planting
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after something else has left the garden.
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So go back through your list and for each one of those, you know,
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three to six crops that you plant or you decided were going
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to be your sort of continuous harvest plants, put them in a
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category AB or C. This is where we kind of, you
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know, help our planning get a little bit easier because now
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we're planning based on the plants behavior.
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Now here is where we get sort of visual with our planning.
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You're going to make a simple grid on paper, or you can use a
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spreadsheet across the top of this grid.
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You want to write the months that you will be gardening, and
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this includes sort of the months where you're also planting, not
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necessarily where you're just harvesting or if you want a lot
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of detail, you can do this in weeks, which likely means that
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you're going to have to have multiple sheets.
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So let's just start with the months, OK?
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Do your months across the top. And then down the side, you're
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going to write those 3 to 6 core crops that you want continuous
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or multiple harvests from that are sort of in that category
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A&B. And then you also want to list
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those long season producers, those category C crops like your
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tomatoes or your Peppers, right? And then you can also pop in
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there what we would consider to be filler crops.
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These are crops that you can tuck in anywhere, like radishes
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or leafy greens. These usually also fall into
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that category A, but you may not necessarily be reliant on these,
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right? So these are things where you're
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just going to kind of fill in where you have room on the plan.
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Also on this sheet, we want to add those season anchors, so
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your last frost date and your first frost date.
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If frost isn't your limiter, then you're using whatever your
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main seasonal constraint is. So when's your rainy season or
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your daylight hours? Whatever it is, this frost date
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anchoring is important for our continuous harvest schedule
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because planting dates and how quickly crops mature changes
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with the seasons. So that's why we want to work
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with harvest windows and not strict dates.
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Gardening is going to be kind of fluid based on a lot of
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different factors. And then you can also on this
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grid just label across the top to what your cool seasons are
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and what your warm seasons are. So for me, this would look like,
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you know, cool season in the beginning months and then, you
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know, a sort of warm season there in the middle and then a
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very short cool season again at the end.
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Even if your climate is different from mine, you still
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have seasonal shifts. Crops thrive in different
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conditions, and that affects the window where you can plant and
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the window where you will harvest.
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This is also important too, because sometimes in the
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instructions that you see on seed packets or in seed
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catalogs, it may give you actual specific information like OK,
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plant in May for a July harvest. But again, if you live someplace
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way South in southern Texas or southern Florida or something
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that May to July window might already be way too warm.
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You might actually have to be planting in March, you know, for
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a May or June harvest. So this is going to help you
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sort of avoid any confusion that might come with those types of
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instructions and have you planting or, or designing your
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plantings based on your actual season.
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So now we can use three different strategies to achieve
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this continuous harvest. The first strategy is to plant
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the same crop more than once. This is classic succession
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planting, planting smaller amounts at regular intervals so
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that they mature at different times.
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So when one harvest window is finished, then the next one is
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just coming ready and you have a steady supply.
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Sometimes we do this in what I call split successions, so
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multiple plantings in spring and then a break in the summer and
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then one or two plantings in the fall.
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And this accommodates those crops that just don't like the
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heat. So usually this is things like
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in my area, leafy greens, brassicas, you know, some of the
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the herbs that aren't real don't really like the heat as much.
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And so this gives them that break from the summer heat, but
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it still gives me multiple crops.
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So yours might vary, of course, depending on where it is that
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you're gardening. The second strategy is to plant
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different varieties within that same crop that have different
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days to maturity. So instead of planting just one
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lettuce variety and planting it like every three weeks for the
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first section of the gardening season, you would plant an early
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and a mid and a late maturing type.
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Or, you know, at least varieties with different maturity windows
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so that the the harvest naturally staggers.
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This works for a lot of crops and actually saves on labor too.
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You know, corn is a classic example of this, planting all
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the corn at one time, but making sure that they are varieties
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that mature at 65 days, 80 days and then 95 days so that you get
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around 2 weeks between harvests and they don't cross pollinate.
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This works with any crop that you want multiple harvest from
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that have varieties with different days to maturity.
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The caveat to this is if you're doing this in the spring, you
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have to remember that as the soil warms up and the day length
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increases, crops are going to tend to mature a little bit more
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quickly. So while you might plant
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varieties that technically mature, you know, two weeks
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apart from each other. So let's use the corn for an
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example, 6580 and 95 days. Those are all 15 days apart.
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But what you might find is that between the 65 and 80 day crop,
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you know, window your harvest them at like 14 days apart.
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But then between the 80 and 95 days, you might only be
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harvesting them 10 days apart. So just kind of keep that in
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mind when you're planning this difference, this type of a
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strategy. And then the third strategy is
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relay planting. So this is replacing those
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finished crops with new crops. This is sort of a fill and
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follow method. And so basically when something
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finishes in the garden, then you already know what's going into
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that space next. And this is probably where most
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gardeners start with their their sort of continuous harvest plan.
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This is sort of natural, what we might decide to do the first
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time we start planting, OK, Or we start planning, really.
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So now we're going to apply these different strategies to
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the grid that you wrote out. So the first thing to do is to
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decide your ideal harvest window, OK?
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Remember, we are planning the garden around when we want to
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harvest, when we want to be eating these things and how
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frequently, OK? So instead of starting with
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planting dates, we start with our ideal harvest dates.
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Now we're going to assume that these dates are realistic.
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I mean, in my area, lettuce in like the Midsummer is not going
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to be possible, but in some areas it will be, right?
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So in an ideal world, when would you like to be harvesting
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lettuce? When would you like to be
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harvesting beans? When do you want your main
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season harvest to come in right? Do you do you want a fall garden
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harvest window? This is one of the most
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compelling reasons to have a really solid garden plan, so you
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can stretch the harvest so you have a continuous supply across
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the season. So for each of those crops on
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your list, write the months that you would love to be harvesting
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it. OK, so for example, lettuce, you
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could say you want lettuce from May through October.
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Is it going to be possible? Maybe we'll talk about that in a
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minute. OK, Just write your pie in the
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sky dreams down. Lettuce from May through
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October. You want Bush beans from June
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through September. Carrots.
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You want them. You know, maybe you want carrots
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all season long, but maybe you only want beets like in June and
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July and then again in like October and November.
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Or you want your cucumbers all season.
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Yours is going to vary by region.
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That's fine. This is the wish list harvest
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window. OK.
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And then we convert that wish list into a plan.
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And for continuous harvest scheduling, you typically need 3
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pieces of information, your appropriate planting windows,
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the days to maturity on the crops that you're planning on
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planting and then the length of harvest from first to last
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picking. And we are going to work
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backwards using these days to maturity and this harvest
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length. OK, So days to maturity are on
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the seed packets in the catalogs.
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The harvest length, you learn this partly from experience.
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So you may have to estimate this from at the beginning.
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You can also kind of look this up and say like how how long can
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you typically harvest Bush green beans?
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You know, if you ask a question like that, you're going to get
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an answer that's going to average you around 2 to 3 weeks,
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you know, or an estimated window of picking.
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OK, so start there. The simple version is the start
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of the harvest window, right? Which is basically you take your
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transplanting date or the date of emergence, you add the days
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to maturity. And remember the days to
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maturity starts at transplanting or emergence, not when we
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planted the seed, right? So we're going to presume that
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that is the start of our harvest window, whatever date we
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transplanted and plus the days to maturity on the seed packet,
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that is the start of our harvest window.
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The end of the harvest window depends on the crop type, right?
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Is it a one and done crop? Well then we have a very short
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window, usually about a week or two.
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If it's a cut and come again type of a crop, then it's got a
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longer window if the conditions are right and we are harvesting
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properly. If it's a long season producer,
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well, then we definitely have a longer window once those plants
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are established and have started producing.
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And then if we're doing relay crops, well, the next crop
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starts a new window. So you almost get to decide when
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the end of that harvest window is if you want to cut it
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shorter, right? We do have to remember in this
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that later plantings often grow faster because those conditions
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improve, right? So the difference between
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planting dates doesn't always equal the difference between the
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harvest dates. There is a catch up effect here
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and it's most obvious in the spring and then the reverse
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actually happens in the fall. The later crops slow down in
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maturity as the day's March on. So you might want to stagger
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your plantings further apart in the spring and then maybe closer
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together in the fall. Again, this takes some
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experience so I accident absolutely recommend taking
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notes in. What's that?
00:19:34
Oh yeah, your garden journal. OK, so let's talk practical
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rhythms for your planting intervals.
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One resource that I really like is from the University of
00:19:44
Minnesota Extension, and it includes a table of example
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planting intervals for like a continuous harvest for a variety
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of different crops. So things like leaf lettuces you
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would plant weekly, Beans you would plant about every 10 days.
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Carrots and beets you plant every couple of weeks and so on.
00:20:02
So I'll leave a link to that in the show notes.
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But if you check it out, ignore the entry for peas, it says like
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110 days. I think they meant 10 days and
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somebody typoed it, I'm assuming.
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I mean, if you waited 110 days and I guess you would be trying
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for a spring crop and a fall crop.
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So I don't know, maybe that was intentional.
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But anyway, use your best judgment on that.
00:20:22
So what I am going to say about that chart and any other chart
00:20:26
that you might find that gives you an idea for these planting
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intervals, These numbers are starting points, OK.
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Your local climate, your planting window, your
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preferences are all going to affect the rhythm at which you
00:20:40
do your planting intervals. But these intervals are useful
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because they give you a repeatable planning pattern.
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So choose an interval for each one of your core crops.
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Look at the ones that you want to harvest continuously and
00:20:54
decide, am I going to plant this every week?
00:20:57
Is it going to be every 10 to 14 days?
00:20:59
Will I just plant them every three weeks or no interval at
00:21:03
all? Maybe you just decide, you know
00:21:05
what? I don't want to mess with
00:21:06
planting that one multiple times and it stays off the list.
00:21:09
OK, now you place those intervals onto your grid.
00:21:14
You're going to put your harvest windows onto the grid.
00:21:16
So for each crop, pick the harvest week that you want,
00:21:23
count backwards by the number of days to maturity to find either
00:21:27
the transplanting week or the date that the seed should be
00:21:30
emerging. And then you count backward
00:21:32
based on the either the average days of germination, right,
00:21:36
which is going to be your seed starting date or the number of
00:21:39
days that it's supposed to be grown on indoors.
00:21:41
And that gets you your first planting date, right?
00:21:43
So you can actually get a lot of different information on this
00:21:47
calendar. You can have the dates that
00:21:50
you're going to harvest, the date that you're going to plant
00:21:53
and the date that you're going to start the seeds or, you know,
00:21:56
buy the transplant or whatever. And then when you look at that
00:21:59
interval, then you can add repeat plantings based on the
00:22:03
interval that you decided on. And then you just stop when you
00:22:07
reach the end of the planting window for your region.
00:22:10
So let's use lettuce as an example for this because it's a,
00:22:13
it's a really easy one. You know, lettuce for me would
00:22:16
have its final harvest in June from a spring planting date and
00:22:20
then we would pick up our harvest again in early October,
00:22:24
right? So I'm going to take that
00:22:27
harvest window and I'm going to work backwards from there to
00:22:30
tell me when that plant, that plant can be planted
00:22:34
successfully and then the succession plantings that
00:22:37
happened within that window for that crop based on my climate.
00:22:41
So once you do this, your harvest window grid starts to
00:22:46
look like an overlapping like set of bars you've got.
00:22:50
You know this one, you start your harvest here, and then this
00:22:54
one starts the harvest like a week or two later, and then this
00:22:57
one starts after that. You're literally building a
00:22:59
continuous bar of harvest coverage for however long you
00:23:04
want it to be. So pick one of your core crops.
00:23:08
Leaf lettuce is a really good one to start with and just
00:23:10
succession or sketch. Sketch out your succession plan
00:23:13
across the season and even if you only do 1 crop at first, you
00:23:18
will get the hang of the method pretty quickly.
00:23:20
I know it kind of sounds complicated with me, like
00:23:23
talking it and speaking it out loud.
00:23:25
Go back and listen again, right? Go through and pause this
00:23:28
episode as you do the work. Once you get the hang of it, you
00:23:33
can do this for all of your crops and it becomes easy to
00:23:37
understand, right? It sounds complicated, it is
00:23:40
not, but it is very, very effective.
00:23:46
So to make this maybe a little bit easier to work with in terms
00:23:49
of how you plan out a continuous harvest, I want to give you like
00:23:53
3 different templates that you can use just to simplify the
00:23:56
thinking a little bit, right? The first one would be having
00:23:59
anchors and bridges and fillers. So your anchors would be those
00:24:03
long season producers that define your summer garden.
00:24:06
It could be tomatoes, your Peppers, cucumbers, squashes,
00:24:09
that sort of thing. The next would be the bridges.
00:24:12
These are the crops that kind of connect the seasons and fill in
00:24:17
the gaps. So your greens, your carrots,
00:24:19
your beets, your herbs, right? These are what I usually refer
00:24:21
to as those split successions. These are the ones that may only
00:24:24
grow in the cooler shoulder seasons or they need to be
00:24:27
broken up in some way to sort of bridge that gap, right?
00:24:30
And then the third thing is those fillers, those are those
00:24:33
really quick crops that you can tuck in or that can follow
00:24:36
behind something. So radishes, really quick
00:24:39
growing greens like arugula, those quick successions, the
00:24:42
ones that mature very quickly and can just fill in space
00:24:45
somewhere or act as a relay crop.
00:24:47
You can combine all three of these, your anchors, your
00:24:50
bridges and your fillers. And this creates the continuous
00:24:53
harvest feel in your garden. So if you define each crop as
00:24:57
one of these these these three things, it makes it easier to
00:25:01
know where they will fit into your plan.
00:25:04
The second template would be the same crop with different
00:25:07
varieties. This is that succession planning
00:25:11
where if you want a longer harvest without having to do
00:25:14
like a complex repeat sewing calendar, then you're just doing
00:25:20
this by variety timing. So you're filling the harvest
00:25:23
window that relies on planting different varieties with
00:25:28
different days to maturity all at the same time so that it
00:25:32
naturally staggers the harvest. So you'll do an early variety, a
00:25:35
mid season variety and a later variety and you just plant them
00:25:38
all at the same time and boom, you are done.
00:25:40
Now you just got to wait until the harvest.
00:25:42
OK. And then the third template
00:25:44
would be sort of breaking it up in your beds or in the garden as
00:25:50
a whole into like 3 different seasons.
00:25:53
Your spring crop, your summer crop, your fall crop.
00:25:56
This is that relay planting concept.
00:25:58
The idea is that the same space can produce multiple crops over
00:26:02
the season if you plan in sequence.
00:26:05
And this is probably where, like I said, everyone sort of
00:26:07
naturally starts their garden planning journey.
00:26:10
At least this is where it started for me.
00:26:12
What does the bed look like across the season?
00:26:14
So it might be early greens and then transition to beans and
00:26:18
then fall greens, right? The exact crop is going to vary
00:26:22
by region, but the planning principle is what matters.
00:26:25
So to complete your plan and fill all of your harvest
00:26:29
windows, you might actually decide to use a combination of
00:26:32
these techniques. And one bed might be, you know,
00:26:35
using those anchors and bridges and fillers.
00:26:37
And the next bed might be the same crop with different
00:26:40
varieties. And that third bed might be a
00:26:42
spring crop into a summer crop and then to a fall crop again,
00:26:44
it's your garden. You figure out how to do it.
00:26:47
Just a matter of figuring out the plan.
00:26:50
Some crops are naturally continuous crops.
00:26:53
Some crops are better planned as a couple of batches, or one bulk
00:26:58
harvest or one long season planting that you support.
00:27:03
Well, not every crop needs to be continuous.
00:27:06
So you know the method. Choose the method based on the
00:27:10
crop and the planting window and how long it takes to reach
00:27:13
maturity and how long that harvest window is.
00:27:16
And then we also need to remember to add in those buffers
00:27:18
because weather and biology are not robots and weather changes
00:27:24
our garden timelines. So 2 plantings 2 weeks apart and
00:27:28
won't always harvest two weeks apart, especially in the spring
00:27:31
and the fall. So if it's a direct seeded crop,
00:27:33
expect some variability for sure.
00:27:35
If it's a fall crop, count on slower growth as the day
00:27:40
shorten. If it's a heat sensitive crop,
00:27:42
then expect that harvest window to shrink the closer you get to
00:27:45
those higher heat months. So when you sketch the harvest
00:27:48
windows, building a little bit of slack.
00:27:50
And then of course, the part that turns you from guessing
00:27:54
every year into being dialed in is using records to make every
00:27:58
year easier and easier, right? Continuous harvest scheduling
00:28:02
improves massively when you keep basic records.
00:28:06
Hello, garden journal. OK, we need to know what you
00:28:09
planted, when you planted it, when the harvest started, how
00:28:13
long it lasted. OK, that's it.
00:28:15
That you know, even if you, if you, if you hate taking notes,
00:28:18
just the bare minimum of the date it was planted and the
00:28:21
first harvest and the last harvest.
00:28:22
That's going to tell you a lot of what you need to know for the
00:28:25
next season because that's your personal harvest window data.
00:28:30
And it gets better every season, which in turn will help you plan
00:28:33
better and get better at filling your ideal harvest windows.
00:28:36
So here is what you're going to do.
00:28:39
You're going to draw your grid with your months or your weeks
00:28:42
if you want to get really detailed.
00:28:43
But again, I recommend just starting with the months the
00:28:45
first time, right? Pick one crop.
00:28:48
Pick the greens that you want to grow, or the beans or the
00:28:50
carrots, whatever it is, pick one crop to do this with.
00:28:53
Decide the harvest span that you want.
00:28:57
Choose that interval rhythm. So are you going to plant weekly
00:29:01
or every 10 days or every three weeks?
00:29:04
Whatever it is, add those plantings onto your grid across
00:29:09
the viable planting window. So if you can only grow lettuces
00:29:13
on the cool shoulder seasons, don't put plantings in the
00:29:18
middle of the summer. We know that's not going to
00:29:19
work, right? So plant it, do it across the
00:29:22
viable planting window and then circle those kind of gap weeks
00:29:26
that might be caused by like an ideal weather conditions for
00:29:30
that crop and then choose a filler crop for each one of
00:29:33
those gaps. And now you have one lane of
00:29:38
continuous harvest with one or maybe 2 crops in it.
00:29:41
OK, now do that for three different crops, 3 different
00:29:45
lanes. And I think you will begin to
00:29:47
visualize the difference in your plan immediately because you
00:29:51
will be able to see exactly what is being harvested when and
00:29:55
where you have some gaps that you can fill.
00:29:58
OK, so let's do a quick recap. A harvest window is the time
00:30:02
that you can harvest a crop once it starts.
00:30:06
Planning by harvest windows means that you plan your eating
00:30:10
1st and then you plan your plantings backwards from there.
00:30:14
The three strategies for continuous harvest are repeat
00:30:17
plantings at intervals, different varieties with
00:30:20
different maturity timing, and then relay planting of follow on
00:30:24
crops to keep the space in production.
00:30:26
The harvest window grid turns these ideas into a plan that you
00:30:31
can actually use and your plan gets better every year when you
00:30:36
record your first and last harvest dates.
00:30:42
All right, and that's it for today.
00:30:44
In the show notes, I'm going to link to a bunch of different
00:30:47
research based extension resources that talk about the
00:30:50
continuous harvest scheduling and succession sewing or relay
00:30:54
planting, all these things. I am also going to link to the
00:30:57
episodes that I have done on succession planting and
00:31:00
intercropping, which we didn't really touch on today, but it's
00:31:02
a part of that relay planting. And now I'll give you more
00:31:05
information on how you can achieve this without absolutely
00:31:08
losing your mind. Until next time, my gardening
00:31:11
friends, keep on cultivating that dream garden, and we'll
00:31:13
talk again soon.