Succession planting, the every-two-weeks rule

Published April 9, 2026 by the SeedCalc team

My first garden produced exactly one harvest of lettuce. I planted 32 lettuces on April 20. They were all ready to eat by June 5. We ate salad every night for ten days. Then the bed was empty for the rest of the summer.

This is the most common beginner mistake in home gardening: planting everything at once, harvesting everything at once, and then watching the bed sit empty for weeks.

Succession planting fixes it. The rule is simple. Every 2 to 3 weeks through the growing season, sow a new round of anything that matures in under 60 days. Your kitchen never runs out. Your bed never sits idle.

What succession plants

Only fast-maturing crops work. These are the ones I put on a rolling schedule:

• Lettuce (45-55 days to harvest): succession every 2 weeks April through July, then again late August through October
• Radishes (28 days): succession every 10-14 days, cool season only (spring + fall)
• Bush beans (55 days): succession every 3 weeks June through late July
• Arugula (35 days): succession every 2 weeks in cool weather
• Cilantro (50 days, bolts fast): succession every 3 weeks
• Spinach (45 days): spring and fall only, bolts in heat
• Baby beets (50 days for greens, 65 for roots): every 3 weeks
• Carrots (65-75 days): plant two successions, early spring and midsummer for fall harvest

Crops that don't succession: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, winter squash, corn, brussels sprouts. These are single-planting, long-season crops.

My actual calendar, Zone 6a Indiana

Last frost May 15, first frost October 1. Here's the rolling schedule I run every year:

• Mar 28: Radish round 1, spinach round 1, arugula round 1 (under row cover)
• Apr 11: Radish round 2, lettuce round 1, carrots round 1
• Apr 25: Radish round 3, lettuce round 2, spinach round 2
• May 9: Radish round 4, lettuce round 3, bush beans round 1 (under row cover)
• May 23: Lettuce round 4 (heat-tolerant varieties only: Jericho, Nevada), bush beans round 2, cilantro round 1
• Jun 13: Bush beans round 3, cilantro round 2, lettuce round 5 (if shaded)
• Jul 4: Bush beans round 4, baby beets round 1
• Jul 25: Carrots round 2 for fall harvest, baby beets round 2
• Aug 15: Lettuce round 6 (cool-season varieties return), spinach round 3, arugula round 2
• Sep 5: Final radish round, final arugula round, mache for winter

That's roughly every 14-21 days from late March through early September. I keep the calendar in Apple Reminders with a recurring bi-weekly alert.

The summer heat gap

Lettuce, spinach, arugula, and cilantro all bolt (go to seed) in hot weather. In Zone 6a, that means mid-June through mid-August is essentially a dead zone for these crops.

Options:

1. Skip them. Use that bed space for summer crops (bush beans, cucumbers, summer squash).
2. Shade them. A 30% shade cloth over a tunnel keeps soil temperatures 10-15 degrees cooler and extends the lettuce season by 2-3 weeks.
3. Use heat-tolerant varieties. Jericho and Nevada lettuces, Tyee spinach, Santo cilantro all hold longer in heat than standard varieties.

I do a mix of all three. Shade cloth over one bed, heat-tolerant varieties in another, and the third bed switches to pole beans and cucumbers for the summer.

The fall succession secret

Most gardeners quit in August. That's the mistake. Fall is the best gardening season. Cool nights, warm days, reduced pest pressure, and crops that taste sweeter after a frost.

Count backward from your first frost. For Zone 6a, that's October 1. A 45-day lettuce planted August 15 is ready September 30, just before frost. A 65-day carrot planted July 25 is ready October 1, exactly at frost. Carrots actually sweeten after the first light frost because the plant converts starches to sugars.

My best fall harvests are:

• Carrots (Scarlet Nantes, planted late July)
• Spinach (Bloomsdale, planted mid-August)
• Kale (Lacinato, planted late June for October harvest, continues through December)
• Lettuce (Winter Density, planted September, harvested November under row cover)

How to plan around one bed

A single 4x4 bed (16 square feet) can produce all season if you plan it in 4 quadrants, each on a different succession schedule.

Quadrant 1: lettuce + radish (replanted every 3 weeks)

Quadrant 2: spring spinach > summer bush beans > fall spinach

Quadrant 3: spring peas > summer pole beans > fall kale

Quadrant 4: carrots (spring round) > bush beans (summer) > carrots (fall round)

Total annual harvest from 16 square feet at this rotation: easily 30-40 pounds of produce.

Small-batch sowing

Don't sow the whole packet every time. A typical lettuce packet is 500 seeds. If you sow 16 seeds every 2 weeks, a single packet lasts 30+ rounds, probably 3-4 seasons.

Store the rest in a mason jar in the refrigerator. Lettuce seed stays viable for 5+ years in cold, dry storage. I'm still planting seeds I bought in 2021.

Tools for the calendar

I use Apple Reminders with a recurring bi-weekly alert titled "Sow next round." The list of what to sow is pinned to my garden shed door, updated each March. Anything more elaborate is overkill.

Some gardeners swear by spreadsheets. Johnny's has a free "Seed-Starting Date Calculator" that works too. The tool doesn't matter, consistency does.

Tracking what you actually harvest

The part most people skip, and the part that makes year-two succession planning dialed in: writing down what you harvested and when. I keep a small Moleskine notebook in the garden shed. Each bed, each round, I note the sow date, first harvest date, and approximate yield.

After three seasons of this, I know that my Buttercrunch lettuce sown April 11 is ready exactly May 28 in Zone 6a. I know that French Breakfast radishes from Baker Creek hit 28 days almost to the day in cool weather and 22 days in warm weather. I know that Blue Lake bush beans sown May 9 give me a first picking June 28 and peak for 3 weeks after that.

That notebook is worth more than any garden planning app I've tried. Specific dates, specific varieties, specific yields. Your backyard isn't Johnny's test plot; your dates won't match theirs exactly. Keep your own data.

One sentence to remember

Every 2 weeks, sow one new square of the fastest crop you have. The rest takes care of itself.

Plan your rotation with the calculator and figure out how many plants you're committing to per round.