Succession planting, round two...

I haven't kept up with writing about all the gardening activities, as it's been too busy...for obvious reasons.

To backtrack from earlier posts about garden planning, here's some examples of how to get an earlier season in the garden.

The long planter in the front had arugula, spinach and radishes

Succession planting 

All of the arugula, spinach and radishes have been harvested since early June.  In some of my gardens, we filled this real estate with nightshades and companions.  What used to have those early crops, now have tomatoes (or eggplants, peppers, tomatillos or ground cherries), with basil inter-planted, and carrots seeded in between all plants.  Soon the plants will fill in and we'll forget that we had those prior crops.

Closer look at the eggplants

Now the same planter has ground cherries,
tomatoes and eggplants

Ground cherries, basil and carrots

In one of my gardens, the arugula has been replaced with pole beans, cucumbers and squash.  This area will turn from a simple horizontal garden, to a nice vertical planting.

Arugula before an early harvest

Same area with a trellis, after all arugula was harvested

 Another good way to utilize space is to inter-plant radishes with chard or beets (same species).  In a future posting, I'll show some before and after photos.