When I was growing up my family always had a summer vegetable garden,
and we planted all of our crops at the same time after the last frost.
This approach led to very large individual harvests
because crops planted at the same time also have to be harvested at about the same time.
This can lead to large temporary surpluses
that have to be quickly preserved or lost to spoilage.
This was certainly true of our family garden.
I clearly remember my mother working very hard to preserve surplus crops
and by the end of the growing season a large freezer in the basement
was full of frozen fruits and veggies
and specially built shelves were crammed with canned produce.
Though my wife and I would love to have more of a surplus to preserve and enjoy over the winter,
as vegetarians we eat most of the produce from our 600 square foot garden in real time
and there's usually very little left over.
We usually have some peppers and tomatoes to dehydrate in the fall
and we have enough garlic, pumpkins, and summer squash to last through the winter
but that is about it!
And this is despite our best efforts to grow as much food as possible.
Without much of a surplus to preserve,
we looked for other ways to enjoy garden produce and lower our grocery bills throughout the year.
For us, the obvious answer was to create a continuous harvest through succession planting and season extension.
The closer we can get to a continuous harvest,
the less we’ll miss the preserved crops.
And one big advantage of a continuous harvest is that the produce is always fresh.
Our first step toward a more continuous harvest was to grow more cold hardy crops.
This allows us to start earlier in the spring and grow later in the fall
even without cold frames or a hoop house.
Growing more cold hardy crops not only increases our harvests
but also increases total yields from our garden.
For example, peas, turnips, spinach, kale, collards, lettuce, beets, carrots, and radishes
are just some of the crops that can be started outside weeks before the last frost.
We plant similar crops in late summer for a fall harvest.
This extends the growing season by 2 or 3 months
and provides harvests before most summer gardens are planted
and after they’re done for the year.
Our next step not only lengthened our growing season but also decreased our workload.
We started growing more cold hardy annuals and self-sowing annuals.
Here you can see perennial French sorrel emerging in mid-March in our zone 5 garden.
Nearby, another perennial green, Good King Henry, is just starting to come up.
This bed also features 2 of our favorite self-sowing cold hardy annuals -
mache and claytonia.
These spring greens are 2 of the most prolific volunteer crops that we grow.
To ensure a crop next year,
all we have to do is make sure to let some plants go to seed to produce the next crop.
And our winter garden is the real showcase for our cold hardy perennials and self-sowing annuals.
For a complete list of these crops,
please see the description below.
We took our next step toward a more continuous harvest
almost 10 years ago after I read Eliot Coleman's book "Four Season Harvest".
Eliot grows year round on his zone 5 organic farm in Maine.
During the winter, he grows in unheated hoop houses
and covers his plants with row covers to protect them from the cold.
I first adapted Eliot’s approach to our garden by growing under cold frames and low tunnels in the fall and winter.
And sometimes I’d put cold frames inside low tunnels for extra protection.
When using 2 layers, cold hardy crops often survived the entire winter.
And last fall, I finally built our hoop house, which makes growing under 2 layers of protection much easier
and gave us harvests all winter long.
Though this winter was relatively mild,
I expect to be able to grow a number of cold hardy crops every winter,
even when temperatures are below normal.
Finally, though succession planting has always been a part of our startegy for a continuous harvest,
we've placed much more of an emphasis on it in recent years.
Our goal is to have something growing in all of our garden beds whenever possible.
When we harvest one crop, we plant something else in its place that is well suited for the season.
And we also stagger plantings of crops like turnips, beets, and carrots
in order to have a continuous harvest of these crops
rather than a large surplus at any given time.
This year I plan to share not only our complete spring planting schedule
but also all of our succession plantings.
My hope is that this will help those of you who would like to increase your yields
and enjoy a continuous harvest.
At the same time, we'll continue to strive to grow surpluses during the summer.
Though this has proven to be difficult so far,
ideally we would like to have surpluses to preserve
and a continuous harvest of fresh produce from our garden.
Well, that's all for now. Thank you very much for watching,
and until next time remember you can change the world one yard at a time.