Veggies

BACK IN THE DAY

We live on 600m2 in Sydney’s greater west and for years I would contribute to the family larder by growing vegetables but what this meant generally was –

1. Cultivating like mad each spring using a petrol powered rotary hoe
2. Buy in lots of manure (primarily chook and horse), spread it around and dig it in
3. Buy in a load of straw and mulch everything in sight
4. Buy in a load of seedlings and plant everything in sight.

The result of this fevered action was trickle of vegetables into summer, a glut of just about everything in mid to late summer and then little else from then through to the next spring when the whole thing started again. I needed to be able to provide a mix of veggies for us throughout the year and to do that I needed to succession plant.

Succession planting means “following one plant with another” so that you can ensure a regular supply of veggies throughout the year. A succession planting allows you to maximise the vegetable production in volume and variety for a given area by obtaining a yield all year round. A succession plan allows you to achieve that aim by setting up a framework which you can use sow and plant out the veggies which will meet the needs of your family.

I created my succession plan about 8 years ago and have been using it ever since. Here is process to help you develop your own succession planting plan.

CREATING THE PLAN

1. List what veggies you want to eat each year – There is a list to help you out here, but this will work out best if you do your own research. Start out with the veggie you are eating now and list the type and variety (if you know it). If you are only eating commercial veggies from Woolies this can be difficult. If you buy your veggies from a fruit and veg shop, organic shop or growers market ask the proprietors if they can help you find out. Mind you it would be a waste to grow some commercial veggie varieties, bred for transportability rather than flavour or nutrition but you have to start somewhere.

At this point it is also worth doing some research. Hit the books, the seed catalogues and the net and see what varieties are produced in or near your area/climate zone. Local growers, especially backyard growers can also provide a mine of information on what varieties do well in your area and are worth eating (notice I did NOT say to hit the local growers!).

2. Find out when in the year each food likes to grow – The seed catalogues and veggie books come into their own here by providing general information on when individual vegetable should be planted to get the best out of them. Individual varieties will vary within these general figures ( more on that later) but at this point the information you glean will enable you to work out which vegetables can be sown or harvested during which months of the year. Obviously the climate will have a considerable impact on these dates so you really should only look at information generated as locally as you can find. We live in the temperate zone here in Aus and so looking at recommendations for outside that zone will only be misleading.

3. Guess how much of each food you want to eat – This can be as complex or simple as you like. The numbers can be arrived at by keeping a food diary for year and entering what you eat each day in that, doing it for a month or to then extrapolating for a year (not as accurate due to seasonal supply issues) just sit down with the family and guesstimate how much veggies you will  need.

4. Work out how much growing area you have – to get the most out of the plan you will need to factor in how much land you intend to put down to growing veggies. We found that a number of smaller (1.2m x 2.0m) beds worked out better for us, being easier to manage and rotate producing smaller crops more regularly. When you work out your growing area don’t neglect some less conventional growing spaces you may have access to –

a. The front yard

b. Spare space in friends, relatives or neighbours yards

c. Community garden plots

d. Pots/containers on patios, roofs, driveways or other unused spaces

By having an idea of the area of land you have to work with you can estimate how much food you can be growing at any one time. We work on a spacing of about 30cm between each plant and interplant rather than waste space with row plantings.

5. Create a plan – with all the homework done you can now draw up your plan. One of the things that amazed me when we convened a “Year Round Growing” group at Permaculture Sydney West to develop succession plans with people was the variety of plans developed. Everyone’s plans, while accomplishing the same thing, looked and functioned differently. So while I include here a couple of examples to get you started, don’t be afraid to have a go at developing your own from scratch.

6. Follow your plan – As stupid as it sounds, you really need to do this! I found by putting aside a Sunday morning twice a month to sow, pot on and plant out I got into a rhythm after a while and everything just flowed. What I did find was that if I did forget or didn’t bother, the effect was not immediate but a couple of months down the track yields began to suffer and plants which I should be starting to harvest were just not there.

7. Record your harvest, to plan for next year – It is very rare to get anything right first time around, so record any successes and failures and review your plan once you have been following it for 12 months. Even if you adjust your plan on-the-run during the year an end of year review of what worked, and what didn’t, can help you improve your plan year on year. Until you find you are the envy of your neighbours and they will be breaking down your door wanting to know your secret!

Sample Plan 1 (Thanks Greg!)

Sample plan 2

Note - the complete sample plan 2 and a blank to use for developing your own may be downloaded here.

CHOOSE YOUR VARIETY

From your review of the seed catalogues and other data it will become obvious fairly early that some veggies such as tomatoes will have hundreds of varieties whereas others such as Brussels Sprouts may only have a one or two. Having a large number of varieties is good because it means you have some choice over what you grow and eat within the broad heading of each vegetable. It also increases the likelihood of finding a variety or two which fits your particular soil and climatic circumstances and using different varieties can allow you to spread your harvest (see below).

However the large number of varieties can make it difficult decide on which ones to grow and while it is very much a personal decision, here is some information that may help you decide -

Early, main crop or late? –Some vegetables have been bred to be harvested early in the season and so have a shorter time between sowing and harvest. Some even have the word ‘early” in their name which is a dead giveaway, eg Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, Early Scarlet Horn carrot or Phenomenal Early cauliflower but mostly the data from the seed catalogues will point you in the right direction. More often than not the more common varieties tend to be main crop, ie they have a growing time which allows them to be harvested at the height of the growing season. Others have even longer growing times and linger on being be harvested late in the season without a drop in crop quality. It is even possible to plant an early, main crop and late variety of the same vegetable all at once and harvest each one as it becomes ready, thereby spreading the harvest.

Growing Habit: Determinate vs indeterminate – a few vegetables, such as tomatoes, peas and beans contain varieties within their ranks that will grow, mature and be harvested within a specified time and a defined plant size. These are referred to as having a determinate growth habit, also referred to as “bush” or “dwarf” varieties whereas other varieties of the same plant may continue to grow throughout the season. These varieties are referred to as indeterminate, also referred to as “climbing” or “staking” varieties and these will produce for as long as the soil and climatic conditions will allow.

Needless to say, determinate varieties will need to feature in your succession plan for regular replanting while the indeterminate varieties will occupy space in the garden for longer and may interfere with your rotation if you are rotating your plots. Determinate plants are also more likely to give you a single major harvest then little or nothing while the indeterminates will spread the harvest out providing less at any one time but spreading the harvest out to give you more produce over the growing season. Thus if your process calls for regularly planting determinates, this will provide more produce over the year (per unit of ground) than only planting indeterminates at the start of the growing season.

Flavour (and other attributes) will vary between varieties – back when I first started growing our own veggies and the kids were a lot younger, I was getting a good response from everyone for the dwarf stringless beans I was growing. I wanted to increase my production so I went from dwarf to climbing beans. The kids HATED them, and refused to eat them so it was back to the drawing board. You may want to try out a few varieties of each veggie before you settle on which ones you want to grow, or even try before you buy if possible,  but keep the family involved!

Ask what varieties are grown in your area – Again, talking to other backyard growers about what varieties they grow and why, what varieties do well in the area, what ones are particularly tasty, or keep well or both. Don’t lose heart if there are no backyard growers in you immediate area. See if there are any community gardens in the area and talk to growers there, contact your local permaculture or seed savers group for advice too.

CROP ROTATION

It is bad cultural practice to grow the same veggies in the same ground season after season, year after year. Over time you get a reduction in soil fertility (the same plants take out the same nutrients each time they are grown) and you get a build up of pests and diseases. I have seen a number of rotation plans suggested, one three crop rotation starts off with roots and bulbs, then goes to fruit and seed crops then finishes with leaf and stem crops. Another four crop rotation starts with legumes the goes to roots, followed by fruit and finally leaf crops. Of course at the end of each of these the cycle starts again.

The crop rotation plan which makes the most sense to me and which I have used in the past is implemented as follows –

Rotation 1 – Roots (potatoes, carrots, parsnips beetroots etc.)– starting out with root vegetables opens up the soil allowing air and moisture in, which is followed by,

Rotation 2 – Legumes – in other words, peas and beans, these crops are nitrogen fixers which fertilise the soil and they build the soil up for the next crop.

Rotation 3 – leaf crops(cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, silver beet) – These crops require abundant nitrogen to produce and they make use of the nitrogen fixed by the previous crop of legumes.

Rotation 4 –Fruits and others (tomatoes, capsicum, eggplant, corn) – These make use of residual fertility in preparation for starting the rotation again.

When you are developing your plan, keep in the back of your mind that you will need to be moving each class or family of crop around so that you don’t plant the same type of plant in the same ground two seasons in succession.

GOOD COMPANIONS, BAD COMPANIONS

I don’t know what your thoughts are on companion planting, in my experience it doesn’t seem to do much either way, but here are some common-sense suggestions on plants that do and don’t go together well -

• Plant short, shade-tolerant plants beneath taller, bushy plants.
• When you mix sun-loving plants, put tall ones at the south end of the plot and small ones at the north end (to reduce issues with shading)
• Plant herbs throughout the garden, especially basil, mint, sage, and dill but keep dill away from carrots.
• Plant marigolds here and there around the garden to repel pests and encourage the predators that prey on them.
• Do the same with chives, garlic, leeks or onions EXCEPT near or amongst legumes, they will inhibit the nitrogen fixing bacteria living in nodules on the legumes’ root system.
• Exploit the different maturation rates of different crops: plant lettuce, spinach, or silver beet early where you plan to set out squash and melons later, so that weeds don’t have a chance to move in, and you get two crops instead of just one.

DON’T FORGET PERENNIALS

Perennial veggies are the parts of plants which are harvested and eaten like vegetables and where the parent plant lives for more than two years eg asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, chokoes, Malabar spinach and taro. Generally we tend to eat rather more annual vegetables than perennials and so annual vegetables are the type that make up the bulk of our veggie patches. While some perennials like asparagus and artichokes are available only for a short season, others like shallots and rhubarb crop for extended periods. There should be a place in everyone’s veggie growing efforts for perennials.

We have a process where the beds are planted and then 5-6months later have the chook tractor put over them to clean them out and fertilise them, after which the beds are replanted. However because perennials need a long term bed they don’t integrate well with this system so we have dedicated beds for them. We have Jerusalem artichokes growing in a triangular bed near the worm bath, rhubarb and asparagus growing in wicking beds in the front yard as well as (of course) the choko growing over the choko tree.

Perennials certainly Increase the volume and variety of available foods, we find that Jerusalem artichokes and chokoes make a considerable contribution to our diet in autumn and early winter, whereas the asparagus are a very tasty addition to our plates in Spring. Some familiar perennials can be bought from the fruit and veg shop in season and tried before you make a commitment to growing them  (see the previously mentioned chokoes, Jerusalem artichokes and asparagus). Other less common ones (like oca, yacon, arrowroot or yam bean) may need to be grown in a limited fashion to give you a taste test so you can work out if they are worth growing more extensively.

Another important factor is that many perennial vegetables are set and forget, they require much less maintenance than annual vegetables. One good example is the Jerusalem artichoke, you plant the tubers in a prepared bed wait for the stems to grow, flower and die. Once the stems have died the tubers can be methodically dug whenever you require them for a meal until spring rolls around. Then there are usually enough missed tubers or broken off bits of tubers to sprout and grow a crop for the new year with very little intervention from the gardener.

They also seem to require less intervention to stay healthy and pest free. The perennials I have grown including chokoes, asparagus, rhubarb , Jerusalem artichokes, shallots, ginger, galangal, turmeric, water chestnuts, arrowroot, sweet potato are all very hardy. They do not attract the attention of pests with the notable exception of a few aphids on the shallots and they do not seem to suffer much from diseases

If you make room in your plan for some perennial vegetables, they will make sure it is well worth your while.
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RATS AND MICE

It doesn’t matter how good a gardener you are or how fertile your soil is, yields will vary from year to year. The best thing to do is get used to it and ensure that your plan contains enough variety so that even if it is a crap year for one vegetable or one family of vegetables, other vegetables will find the conditions for growth more to their liking.

Don’t be afraid to experiment, there are a whole stack of vegetables out there that you may not have heard of or tried, which may be ideal for your situation. I grew Jerusalem artichokes for some years before I actually tried them and no, as mentioned earlier, they are a big part of our diet. (but they do cause life threatening flatulence) Try unfamiliar veggies, a bit at a time, get from the veggie shop & try first if possible

Note: If a variety is called “All Year Round” – don’t believe it! In most cases it was wishful thinking by the plant breeder!