How to Sequence Plant Seeds
- 1). Determine what zone the garden is located in. Use a garden zone chart to determine first and last frost dates. This will establish how long the garden season is for your area. The shorter the garden season, the fewer crops you can sequence. The longer the garden season, the more crops you can sequenced into a growing season.
- 2). Draw out the garden area or space, forming a gardening diagram. Graph paper is helpful in drawing a garden to scale and identifying the amount of seeds that need to be planted in each row or area.
- 3). Using growing information, make a list of all the varieties of vegetables you plan to plant and their individual days to maturity. Organize the list according to how long it takes for the plants to reach maturity or harvest. This information will determine what seeds can be planted in succession.
- 4). On the garden diagram, fill in perennial crops first. These crops maintain the same placement in the garden year after year. Perennial crops include asparagus, rhubarb, chives, winter onions and strawberries.
- 5). Fill in areas that will be used for crops that usually occupy an area for an entire growing season. For example, if the growing season for the area is 130 days long, a pumpkin variety that matures in 100 days will take up a set garden space for an entire season. It can not be followed by another planting in that space. However, it can still be used in companion planting, where different species are interplanted in the same space. The following vegetables usually require the usage of a garden space for an entire season: beans, cabbage, celery, corn, cucumbers, eggplant, melons, okra, peppers, potatoes, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes and Swiss chard.
- 6). On the garden diagram, fill in the succession vegetables that will be planted first. These often include vegetable varieties that thrive in the spring garden. For example, peas, lettuce, spinach and early cabbage all have short growing seasons and do well in the cool weather of early spring.
- 7). Determine how much of a growing season remains after the maturity of each of the first succession plants are harvested. If a vegetable requires 30 days to mature and you have a 130 day growing season, there is a probable window of 90-100 days of growing season left for that area of the garden. You can plant a second round of the same vegetable, fill in with a fall vegetable or simply add a variety of vegetable that has plenty of time to mature. For example, in a short growing season, peas may be directly followed by a fall vegetable, such as cauliflower or beets. However, in a longer growing season, peas may be followed by beans or even tomatoes, depending on the variety.
- 8). Using the completed garden diagram, mark on the calendar the planting dates of all seeds in the garden. Some seeds are started indoors several weeks before the last frost dates, adding length to the growing season. Note the starting dates for these seeds, as well as the expected dates the started plants will be set into the garden. This gives you the sequence to plant the garden.
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