vegetable-garden tuneup: make room for more

IT’S NOT JUST THE BEDS OF FADED SPRING PERENNIALS and gone-by flowering shrubs that need a tuneup around here (and maybe in your yard, too?). The vegetable garden is screaming for attention, as cool-season darlings—the spinach and early lettuces and various other once-succulent things—stretch up in protest, saying “No more!” How to achieve a continuing harvest with some simple succession-sowing tactics:

My mathematical equation starts on paper around June, like this:

1. Make a list of what you want more of (or a first crop of, if it’s a warm-season thing or if you simply didn’t plant an earlier crop).

2. Make a list of things that have gone by or will soon, to assess real estate that you can utilize. In early to mid-June my lists looked like the one below; yours may be very different. My July and August list–for my latest sowings of all–is at at the bottom of the story.

trying to make room here for (as of mid-june*):Beans (pole and bush) Salad greens—repeat sowings Arugula—repeat sowings Cilantro Basil Chard Summer and winter squash (I reserved a row for these, where cutting tulips, now faded, grow) Maybe one bush cucumber plant? Kales and collards Tomatoes of not in yet (and peppers and eggplants if you grow them; I don’t) (*For last-ditch crops for July and August sowings, see the end of the story) space coming available here from:Peas (two long trellises full) by mid-July Spinach Arugula Endive Asian greens Garlic (about mid-July or so, but I’m keeping it in mind for a fall prospect…maybe the late peas?) 3. Compare the lists, and start making matchups. Examples:Pea trellises might be a good place for pole beans (or other vining crops like squash or cukes)…but then I might want to plant fall peas. Hmmmm…which do I want Read more on awaytogarden.com