Succession Sowing for a Continuous Supply of Vegetables

By Pruning Soft Fruit Bushes for Better Harvests
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20 Aug 2026

Succession Sowing for a Continuous Supply of Vegetables

Why Little and Often Beats One Big Sowing

There is a particular kind of disappointment that comes from an entire row of lettuce hearting up in the same fortnight. You eat salad with every meal, press bags on the neighbours, and then spend August staring at bolted stumps. The same happens with radishes the size of golf balls and courgettes arriving faster than any household can reasonably manage.

Succession sowing is the simple fix. Instead of sowing a whole packet at once, you sow a small batch every two to four weeks through the growing season. Each sowing matures in turn, so you harvest a steady trickle rather than a flood. It suits small gardens especially well, because a one-metre row sown four times across the summer will feed you far better than a four-metre row sown once.

Which Crops Reward Succession Sowing

The best candidates are quick, compact, and either bolt or spoil quickly once ready. These are the ones to divide into batches:

Salad leaves — loose-leaf lettuce, rocket, mizuna, mustard, purslane and corn salad. Sow a short row or a large pot every three weeks.
Radishes — ready in as little as four weeks in summer, so sow fortnightly from March to September.
Spring onions — sow in clusters rather than rows, every three weeks until late July.
Spinach and chard — pick young leaves, resow every four weeks for a constant supply.
Beetroot, turnips and kohl rabi — a metre of each every three to four weeks gives tender roots and stems rather than woody monsters.
Carrots — short rows of early varieties every three weeks avoid a single carrot-fly banquet.
Peas, mangetout and French beans — a two-metre row sown every three weeks keeps pods coming from June to October.
Coriander, dill and basil — herbs that bolt quickly and are best sown in small, repeated pinches.

Some crops genuinely do not suit this treatment. Parsnips, maincrop potatoes, winter brassicas, leeks, onions for storing, and winter squash all need a long, uninterrupted season. Sow those once, and sow them well.

Timing It Around the British Growing Season

In most of the UK, succession sowing runs from early March to the first week of August. From March to May you can sow almost anything on the list, using cloches or a cold frame in the north and in cold springs. Through June and July, heat and long days push leafy crops to bolt, so switch to bolt-resistant lettuce varieties such as 'Little Gem' or 'Merveille des Quatre Saisons', sow in light shade, and water thoroughly before and after sowing.

A workable rhythm for a small plot is a sowing every three weeks: one for early summer, one for midsummer, one for late summer, one for autumn. Keep a note in a diary or on a plant label of what you sowed and when. It sounds fussy; it is the single thing that turns good intentions into an actual supply.

Fitting Extra Sowings into a Small Space

You do not need empty beds waiting for the next batch. Use the gaps. Slip a row of radishes between rows of carrots, sow salad leaves in the shade of taller peas, or tuck spring onions along the edge of a bean trench. On an allotment, dedicate one bed to a rolling salad patch: clear a strip, sow it, and move along the bed through the season.

Pots earn their keep here. A two-litre pot of cut-and-come-again leaves on a doorstep, a trough of rocket by the back door, a hanging basket of trailing tomatoes with basil beneath — all of these are succession crops in miniature. Sow a new pot each time you empty one, and you will rarely be without something to pick.

Practical Tips for Reliable Results

Sow into modules or small pots for anything precious, then plant out. It uses less seed and avoids the gaps that come from sowing direct into dry or cloddy soil.
Thin properly. Crowded seedlings never size up. Thin carrots to 5cm, beetroot to 10cm, and salad leaves to 15cm if you want full hearts.
Water the drill before sowing, not just after. Germination is far more even.
Cover up. Enviromesh or fine netting keeps carrot fly, flea beetle and pigeons off young sowings without chemicals.
Feed the follow-on crops. Quick crops exhaust a bed. A handful of garden compost or a diluted liquid feed between sowings keeps the next batch moving.

Keeping the Supply Going into Autumn and Winter

Late sowings are the most underrated part of the whole system. From mid-July to early August, sow winter-hardy salad crops: land cress, corn salad, winter purslane, claytonia, oriental greens such as mizuna and pak choi, plus hardy winter lettuce under cloche cover. These grow steadily through autumn and can be picked through mild winters, especially in the south and west.

September sowings of broad beans and overwintering peas, and a final August sowing of spinach for overwintering under fleece, will carry you into spring. The principle never changes: small batches, sown often, with something always coming on behind. Get into that rhythm and your plot stops being a feast-or-famine affair and starts behaving like a proper larder.

Vegetables

Planting Spring Bulbs for a Long-Lasting Display

Use obelisks, wigwams or netting to grow runner and French beans vertically, saving ground space while giving pods plenty of sun and air.

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5 Comments

Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply
- John Abraham says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
  
  I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
  Reply
  - Robert Sonnysays Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
    
    I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
    Reply
Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply

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