Which vegetables should I sow every few weeks, and how far apart?

The single biggest difference between a plot that produces something every week and one that produces a glut in August and nothing else is not soil, variety or effort. It is sowing a pinch of seed repeatedly instead of a packet once. The barrier is never knowledge; it is remembering to do it.

Step by step

1. Sort your crops into the three rhythms.Fast bolters every two weeks, medium crops every three to four weeks, long-season crops once. Knowing which group a crop is in is most of the skill.
2. Sow small amounts.A metre of row every fortnight, not five metres every two months. The same seed, the same total crop, spread across the season instead of concentrated.
3. Trigger the next sowing off the bed, not the calendar.The reliable habit is: whenever you clear a crop, sow something. A diary reminder works too, but the cleared bed is a physical prompt you cannot ignore.
4. Sow the next batch when the previous one germinates.The other reliable trigger. When you see batch one come up, sow batch two. It self-perpetuates without any planning.
5. Shorten the intervals in high summer.Everything grows faster and goes over faster in July. Fortnightly sowings may need to be weekly for salad in a hot spell, and three-week intervals become two.
6. Lengthen the intervals at the ends of the season.Growth is much slower in early spring and autumn, so successive sowings catch each other up. Spacing them further apart avoids two crops arriving together.
7. Use modules for the crops that transplant.Salads, brassicas, beetroot, leeks and lettuce all transplant well. Raising a module tray means the next crop is ready to go in the day a bed is cleared, rather than starting from seed.
8. Use catch crops in the gaps.Radish, rocket, salad leaves and baby turnips mature in weeks and fill the space between a bed being cleared and the next main crop going in.
9. Stop sowing at the right point.Each crop has a last useful sowing date, driven by daylength and first frosts rather than temperature. Beyond it, plants grow but never mature.

Tips

• Keep a small pot of seed packets for the successional crops by the back door, so a fortnightly sowing takes two minutes rather than a trip to find the tin.
• Sowing half a row and leaving the other half for a fortnight later is the simplest possible version of this and it works.
• Salad in particular is worth sowing in modules and planting out as small plugs — it defeats slugs and gives you exact spacing.
• Successional sowing is also insurance. If a batch fails to germinate or is eaten, the next one is already two weeks behind it.
• Write the sowing date on a label. Knowing which batch is which lets you judge whether your interval is right.

Common mistakes

• Sowing the whole packet in one go — It produces a glut you cannot eat followed by weeks of nothing, and it is the single most common mistake on a new plot.
• Sowing successionally but at the same interval all season — Growth rates change by a factor of two or three across the year. Fixed intervals give bunching in summer and gaps in spring.
• Treating long-season crops as successional — Parsnips, leeks and maincrop potatoes hold their ground for most of the year. There is only one slot and sowing late wastes it.
• Not clearing a finished crop promptly — The next sowing has nowhere to go. Clearing is part of the sowing cycle, not a separate job.

Questions people ask