Staggered Planting - 27. March 2020

When spring finally arrives, together with our freshly ordered seeds, it's time to plan out planting times. 

Each packet of seeds outlines the period in which the seeds need to be sowed. For certain species of vegetables such as tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, cucurbitacee and so on, we sow the seeds once off, since, once the plants reaches maturity it will continue to give fruits regularly during its life time. Other species such as carrots, lettuce, radishes etc. once harvested won't give anymore fruits (carrots, radishes) or we'll have to wait for a certain period of time for the plant to regenerate and to be able to harvest again (lettuce). 

For this second category, it makes sense to sow seeds at regular intervals, in order to continue to have a fresh harvest regularly. 

Seeds take more or less the same time to germinate and to reach maturity, this means that if we plant the full packet of salad seeds, which can contain hundreds of seeds, we will find ourselves with way to much salad to be able to consume it and it will go to waste. 

It is best to calculate what is going to be the consumption of a certain vegetable and plan the sowing at regular intervals of two/three weeks according to the rate of consumption. 

For example if you know you are going to eat 8 heads of lettuce in two weeks, keep planting 8 lettuce seeds every two/three weeks. 

The same concept applies to annual flower seeds, in order to have flowers blooming continuosly and to extend the bloom periods, plants seeds at regular intervals. 

This is a list of seeds that are worthy staggered sowing: 

Bush Beans
Corn Salad
Mesclun mixes
Mustard greens
Pac Choi
Swiss Chard