If you have a hoophouse, you may now be planning or planting crops for fall, winter and spring. If you don’t have a hoophouse, this is a good time of year to consider getting one. See Twenty Benefits of Having a Hoophouse at the end of that post. There are grants available from NRCS, including reparation levels of funding from traditionally underserved groups of people. There are now companies that will construct your hoophouse for you, if you don’t want to do it yourself, or can’t. If you do want to build your own, there are detailed instructions in my book The Year-Round Hoophouse. You can buy the book here on my Books page direct from me, or from my publisher New Society, or you can buy it wherever books are sold.
The Year-Round Hoophouse cover
I have many posts about winter hoophouse vegetables, so rather than try to write something completely new on the topic, I am going to give you a guide to find your way around the information already here.
Hoophouse bed broadforked to loosen up slumped soil. I’m happy to say our soil structure has improved in the 18 years since this photo was taken! Photo Pam Dawling
Choosing Hoophouse Winter Crops
(see also my post categories on the right side of the computer screen, for special posts on Asian Greens, Cooking greens, lettuce and root crops)
Mid-October photo of September-sown tatsoi and August-sown Tokyo bekana. Fast-growing crops make good use of small windows of time throughout the year. Photo Pam Dawling
Quick crops to fill hoophouse space Oct 1-Nov 29
This fall we had unused space in a bed where we planted Oct 1 radishes and Tokyo bekana (transplanted), Oct 2 brassica salad mix and Chinese cabbage and Oct 3 pak choy. On Oct 4 we had planted only 44ft, half the bed.
On Oct 10 we made a tiny 1.5ft sowing of brassica gap-filler plants. Oct 20 and 23 we did a bit more planting: scallions, radishes and more filler greens and lettuces (12.5ft), leaving 30ft still empty after Oct 23.
The next plantings were more fillers on Nov 9 (5ft), tatsoi on Nov 15 (7ft), radishes on Nov 29 (2ft), total 14ft more, leaving 16ft still empty. Then came lettuce mix on Dec 7 (12ft), leaving 4ft for brassica salad mix #2 on 12/18. Weeks of bare soil – ugh!
Then we start clearing the first round of crops (clearing radish #2 for Dec 8 brassica salad mix #1.5, 2ft) and Dec 18, clearing 4ft of radish #2.5 south side only, for more brassica salad mix #2, Dec 23 (clearing brassica salad mix #1 for radish #5, 4ft).
If we have a similar crop arrangement next winter, or small empty patches in various beds, what can we plant in space that is still empty after Oct 10, and especially the spaces that don’t get planted until mid-November onwards? We could try different crops, for the various crops that follow.
Qualities of possible crops:
Ready to eat 19-83 days from sowing or transplanting. Most spaces 30-60 days.
Cold weather crops, not warm weather crops
Something we’ll want to eat then, that we don’t already have lots of.
Or something that could be processed for later (we generally have enough greens in winter)
Maybe not spinach, as it’s a challenge with pests in the fall.
(Preferably not brassicas as we grow so many and stretch the crop rotation.)
Ready to eat 21-60 days from sowing
In order of earliness:
Pea shoots make a delightful salad ingredient. Photo Pam Dawling
Shoots like sunflowers, buckwheat, peas, (21 days). See Johnny’s Shoots comparison chart. Mostly not frost hardy, but peas have some resistance.
Sow seeds thickly and lightly press seeds into soil. Shade?
Keep moist.
Shoots should be at an edible size (3–6″) within 7–21 days.
HARVEST: Using a sharp harvest knife or scissors, cut the shoots just above the soil line. Place in plastic bags or sealed containers and refrigerate. [Could use up leftover pea seed that won’t be any good next spring]
Our outdoor Eat-All greens in October. Photo Bridget Aleshire
Eat-All Greens (35 days from sowing). Invented by Carol Deppe, as a method of growing cooking greens quickly with little work, direct sown and cut at 12″ tall, leaving the tough-stemmed lower 3”, perhaps for a second cut, or to return to the soil. She recommends 7 greens in particular: Green Wave mustard, Shunkyo and Sensai radishes, Groninger Blue collard-kale, Burgundy amaranth, Tokyo bekana, and Red Aztec huazontle. We tried this outdoors one fall, and I wrote 3 blog posts about it. The crops that did best for us were fava beans, peas, radish greens, Maruba Santoh and Tokyo bekana, frills, turnip greens, Siberian kales. The ones that didn’t work outdoors were kohlrabi, beets, and chard. (We sowed old seeds we had, didn’t buy the recommended ones)
Earlier turnips (45d)
Beets and their greens (easier than spinach and a double crop) (50-60d)
Earlier Senposai – but we have outdoor senposai to harvest in Oct and Nov (40d from emergence after sowing; 20 days from transplant)
Komatsuna (45 days from emergence after sowing; 25 days from transplant)
Kohlrabi (45-60d from 25-40d from transplants)
Earlier Napa cabbage (Blues) (52 days from emergence after sowing; 32 days from transplant).
Fedco Red Dragon Chinese cabbage (60 days from emergence after sowing; 40 days from transplant)
Small early cabbage like Farao, Golden Acre and EJW are all about 62 days from emergence after sowing; 42 days from transplant
Broccoli Tendergreen is 67 days from emergence after sowing; 47 days from transplant
Ready to eat 90 days from planting
Garlic scallions outdoors in late March. Think what might work in a hoophouse! Photo Pam Dawling
Garlic scallions. We normally plant these in early November and eat in early March (120 days). But if we plant them earlier, in a warmer place, they’ll be ready sooner. Normally you don’t want to plant garlic until the soil cools to 50F (10C), because it would grow too fast and not survive the winter. But if it’s just the scallions you want, the rules change. . .
Clif Slade, who farms in a slightly warmer climate zone in Surry, Virginia, tells me they plant garlic for scallions outdoors in every month except August, and in the hoophouse until January (from September?). December plantings are ready indoors in March, outdoors in April. He generally reckons 90 days from planting to harvest, in warm conditions. Any garlic is suitable. Hardneck, softneck, small cloves, large cloves, whole small bulbs. Best return is on small garlic, although bulbs with lots of small cloves can be tiresome to pull apart!
When to sow crops to transplant?
And how would this fit into our schedule?
We’d need to sow 3-4 weeks before a transplant date of Oct 1, thst’s Sept 1-7.
We could sow Sept 15 with our first round of hoophouse transplants. Transplant Oct 7-15 approx
Start the hoophouse nursery bed two weeks earlier?
Or sow in the lettuce nursery seedbed which is already in use in early September?
Bull’s Blood beet greens are the most beautiful addition for salads or can be cooked. Photo Pam Dawling
It looks like we might have 30ft total available for fast crops. Here’s what fits:
Oct 1-Oct 20, 12.5ft. 19 days. Pea shoots, small transplanted senposai.
Oct 1-Nov 9, 5ft. 39 days. Eat-All Greens, transplanted senposai, komatsuna, or kohlrabi, or pea shoots. Maybe garlic scallions.
Oct 1-Nov 15, 7 ft. 45 days. Turnips, transplanted Blues, Red Dragon, small cabbages, or as in B.
Oct 1-Nov 29, 2ft. 59 days. Beets and beet greens, or transplanted Tendergreen broccoli, or as in C.
Oct 1-Dec 7, 12 ft. 67 days. Any of the above
Oct 1-Dec 23, 4 ft. 83 days. Any of the above.
Caution about slow growth
Growing slows down in November and December, so maybe we should be cautious the first time and add 10-14 days to the days to maturity??
Radishes
Cherry Belle radishes in our hoophouse. Photo Pam Dawling
Some years ago I figured out a sequence of sowing dates that would give us an even radish supply, without gaps or gluts. For various reasons, we drifted away from those dates, and I’d like to get back to them again. Sept 6 is the earliest we can sow in the hoophouse. Jan 25 is the latest date that will give us a worthwhile harvest, starting Jan 27. Skipping that last one would be OK.
Cooking Greens to Harvest in Central Virginia in April
Out with the old! In with the new!
A bed of spring Senposai. Photo by Wren Vile
Outdoors, collards, kale and spinach that have over-wintered will be coming to an end. Most years, the collards and then the kale bolt in mid-late March, and the overwintered spinach in April.
Fast growing crops like mustard greens and senposai from spring transplanting will be ready to harvest as leaves from early April; collards and kale from mid-April. Beet greens might be ready at the end of April, or it might be May before we get those, depending on the weather and our sowing dates.
From the hoophouse, we are getting the last of most of our indoor greens. The Russian kale, the chard and the Frills (frilly mustards) are bolting. We do have spinach we sowed in January, which will continue all this month. The Bulls Blood beet leaves no longer look very appetizing, but we could cook those up early in the month. The milder winter means earlier bolting this year.
Cooking Greens to Sow in Central Virginia in April
Bright Lights chard in our garden in July. Photo Pam Dawling
Chard is our best summer cooking green. Chard (Beta vulgaris var. cicla) is the same species as beetroot and, like beets, is a biennial. Hence it will not flower until the second year after planting, and can provide fresh greens all summer and fall, until halted by hard frosts. Even then, the root may survive and regrow the next spring. Leaf beet,also known as perpetual spinach, is a chard, with thinner stems and smaller leaves than most Swiss chard. It is the closest in flavor to spinach for growing in hot weather
If you prefer spinach in spring, as we do, grow that first, and switch to chard for summer, sowing in plug flats or soil blocks three weeks before your last frost date. (We sow March 24-April 6)
If you want chard in spring, you can start flats earlier or direct seed outdoors two or three weeks before the last frost date.
We also use beet greens for cooking, although our main purpose is to grow beets. Our last date for sowing beets in spring is 4/15.
There are other hot weather greens you could sow in central Virginia and warmer climates.
In the hoophouse, it is definitely too late to plant cooking greens. Anyway, we are filling the tunnel with early tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and peppers.
Cooking Greens to Transplant in Central Virginia in April
Broccoli head after rain Photo Wren Vile
Outdoors, we transplant our main cabbage and two sowings of broccoli under nets or rowcover within 6 weeks of sowing. Rowcover is our usual choice, because changeable weather and late frosts are more of an issue here in spring than bugs are. It is important to protect young cabbage and broccoli with 5-8 true leaves from cold stress (<40°F/4.5°C for a few days, or longer at 50°F/10°C). At this stage they are particularly sensitive to cold, which can cause early bolting (and very low yields). After a few weeks, when the weather is more settled, we move the rowcover to newer, more tender crops.
Mid-April: We use saved extra transplants to fill gaps in the broccoli and cabbage plot, at the same time planting out alyssum every 6’ (1.8 m) in the center of the beds. These little flowers attract beneficial insects (see more below).
Ruby Red chard. Photo Kathryn Simmons
Late in April we will transplant leaf beet and chard – it doesn’t take long for the seedlings to grow. Often we cover the prepared bed with hay mulch, then make two rows of “nests” in the 4’ (1.2 m) wide beds. We don’t space the rows evenly across the bed, but bunch them in close to each other in the middle. This saves the paths for us to walk down.
In the hoophouse, in very early April we use young spinach transplants to fill gaps only in the outer thirds of the beds, leaving the bed centers free for the tomatoes, etc. It would be better to have done this in late February and March, but this year we didn’t get to it. We won’t get high yields, planting this late.
Other Cooking Greens Tasks in Central Virginia in April
Early April: We move rowcover from turnips, senposai, early cabbage, kohlrabi and onions as needed for the broccoli and the maincrop cabbage.
Mid-April: We move rowcover from spring-planted kale, collards, mustard and early lettuce for the tender crops. We finish filling gaps in the broccoli and cabbage plot, at the same time planting out alyssum (sown March 3) one plug every 6’ (1.8 m) in the center of the beds. See the Special Topic for April below, for more on farmscaping, as this method of pest management is called.
Early spring cabbage with alyssum to attract beneficial insects. Photo Pam Dawling
Late April: We move rowcovers from for the broccoli and the maincrop cabbage. With broccoli, the first weeks after transplanting are vegetative growth, adding leaves until there are about 20, when “cupping” starts — the leaves start to curl up, forming a convex shape rather than growing straight out. The cupping stage is usually10-14 days before harvest starts, depending on temperature. If the weather gets too hot — more than 80°F (27°C) — too soon, the broccoli may grow only leaves, and not head up.
In the greenhouse, we start to have less work, which is fortunate as outdoor work increases.
Special Cooking Greens Topics for April: Farmscaping for Brassicas
Farmscaping is the inclusion of specific flowers to attract beneficial insects. The pollen and nectar offer an alternative food source to beneficial insects when their insect prey is scarce. And if their insect prey is right by the flowers, what could be better?
Alyssum. Photo Raddysh Acorn
We plant Sweet Alyssum in our spring broccoli patch to attract predators of aphids and caterpillars; Putting 5 percent of the crop area in plants that attract beneficial insects can seriously reduce pest numbers. Sweet alyssum, yarrow, dill, coriander (cilantro), buckwheat, mung beans, other peas and beans, black oil-seed sunflower, calendula and cleome all work well to attract a range of insects (especially ladybugs and lacewings) that eat or parasitize aphids. Pans of water and gravel will help attract aphid midges and lacewings. The gravel provides surfaces for the insects to land on while drinking. Farmscaping can make other insect control unnecessary in a good year. Beneficials will generally move up to 250 feet (75 m) into adjacent crops.
We also plant “insectaries” around the garden, usually at the ends of beds with crops that will be growing for several months. These flowers are planted inside rings sawn from a plastic bucket. The rings alert the crew that something special is there, not just a clump of weeds. Mix flowers to have something blooming all the time.
Insectary circle with sunflower, tithonia, borage, zinnia. Photo Pam Dawling
Another method for incorporating farmscaping is to plant beneficial-attracting perennial flowers in areas that are too challenging to use for production: edges, slopes, tight corners, hedgerows, and field borders.
Other Pest Management for Brassicas
Using rowcovers keeps many pests off the plants while they are small. We have not had much trouble with aphids, perhaps partly because our overhead sprinklers wash them off and they can’t travel far. Insecticidal soap sprayed three times, once every five days, can usually deal with aphids. Our worst pest is the harlequin bug. For lack of a better organic solution, we handpick them. Ladybugs are reputed to eat harlequin bug eggs.
Sometimes we have had enough cabbage worms to make Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) necessary, but usually paper wasps eat the caterpillars. The action level threshold is an average of 1 cabbage looper, 1.5 imported cabbageworms, 3.3 armyworms or 5 diamondback moth larvae per 10 plants. Below this level you can do watchful waiting rather than spraying with Bt or spinosad. We are lucky enough to have the naturally occurring wasp parasite of cabbage worms, the Braconid wasp Cotesia species, which are found as small cottony white or yellowish oval cocoons in groups on brassica leaves. The Cotesia wasps like umbelliferous flowers, and overwinter on yarrow as well as brassicas. If you find Cotesia cocoons in the fall and your brassicas aren’t diseased, you can leave plants in the field over winter. Or you could collect up leaves with cocoons in late fall and store them at 32°F–34°F (0°C–1°C) until spring. Hopefully no one will clean out your fridge without checking.
Richard McDonald has good information in his Introduction to Organic Brassica Production. He reports that broccoli plants with six to sixteen leaves (just before cupping) can lose up to 50 percent of their leaf area without reducing yield. Moderate defoliation (20–30 percent) causes the plant to exude chemicals that attract parasitic wasps and predatory insects. If you relax and allow this amount of defoliation early on, you can encourage these beneficial insects to move in and begin foraging in the area. Once the plants cup, you want to prevent further defoliation by having the most beneficials and the fewest pests on site. If pest levels are above the action threshold, cupping is the stage to take action, and probably not earlier.
Broccoli side shoots offer harvest after the main head is cut. Photo Nina Gentle
To float out worms and aphids after harvest (before cooking!), use warm water with a little vinegar and soak for up to fifteen minutes, then rinse.
Maybe part of your response to Covid-19 is to grow more of your own food, and you are wondering what can bring fastest results. Or maybe you just want to leap into spring and have early harvests. Either way, here is information on some vegetable crops that offer fast returns; ways to get crops to grow faster; ways to get more crops from a small space and some sources for more information.
Vegetable Crops That Offer Fast Returns
In my blog post If Spring is Too Wet in March 2019, I included a paragraph on fast crops.
Ready in 30–35 days from sowing are baby kale, mustard greens, collards, radishes, spinach, chard, salad greens (lettuce, endives, chicories) arugula, and winter purslane. Beet greens from thinnings can be cooked and eaten like spinach.
Many Asian greens are ready in 40 days or less: Chinese Napa cabbage, Komatsuna, Maruba Santoh, mizuna, pak choy, Senposai, tatsoi, Tokyo Bekana and Yukina Savoy). See my Asian Greens of the Month category of posts. There’s a huge range of attractive varieties, they’re better able to germinate in hot weather than lettuce, and faster growing than lettuce. Most reach baby salad size in 21 days, full size in 40 days. Transplant 4-5 weeks after spring sowing, or direct sow. Nutritious as well as tasty. Flavors vary from mild to peppery; colors cover the spectrum: chartreuse, bright green, dark green and purple. A diversity of crops without a diversity of growing methods! Grow when you normally grow kale. Be aware that Asian greens sown in spring will bolt as soon as the weather heats up, so be ready to harvest a lot at once (if you planted a lot, that is!) You can make Kim Chee.
Tatsoi and our August sown catch crop of Tokyo bekana. Photo Pam Dawling
One summer we sowed Tokyo Bekana as a lettuce substitute. 20 days to baby size, 45 days to a (large) full size. We have also grown this at other times of year, when faced with an empty space we hadn’t planned for.
Mizuna and other frilly mustards are very easy to grow, and tolerate cold wet soil to 25°F (-4°C). In addition, they are fairly heat tolerant (well, warm tolerant). Use for baby salads after only 21 days or thin to 8″–12″ (20–30 cm) apart, to grow to maturity in 40 days. Mild flavored ferny leaves add loft in salad mixes and regrow vigorously after cutting.
Also ready in 30–35 days are spinach, chard, salad greens (lettuce, endives, chicories) and winter purslane.
Ready in 35–45 days are baby carrots (thinnings or the whole row), turnip greens (more thinnings!) endive, corn salad, land cress, sorrel, parsley and chervil. Some of the faster smaller turnip roots can also be ready in 45 days or less.
Ready in 60 days are beets, dwarf snap peas, broccoli, collards, kohlrabi, turnips and small fast cabbages (Farao or Early Jersey Wakefield).
Also ready in 50-60 days once we are past frosts: zucchini, yellow squash, bush beans, small cucumbers can grow fast.
Garlic scallions can be grown over-winter, but will grow quickly in spring. Plant scrappy little garlic cloves you don’t want to cook with in close furrows and wait till the leaves are 7” (18 cm) tall before digging up the plant and preparing like onion scallions (spring onions). Can be eaten raw, but more often cooked. You can also plant whole bulbs without separating the cloves. This is a good use for extra bulbs that are already sprouting in storage.
Our garlic scallions in February. we usually space the rows much closer than this. We’ll start harvesting when they reach 7″ in height. Photo Pam Dawling
See other blog posts in my Cooking Greens for the Month series, and Asian Greens for the Month, as well as Lettuce of the Month
Try Eat-All Greens, an idea form Carol Deppe. Patches of carefully chosen cooking greens are sown in a small patch. When it reaches 12″ tall, Carol cuts the top 9″ (23 cm) off for cooking, leaving the tough-stemmed lower part, perhaps for a second cut, or to return to the soil.
Twin Oaks Eat-All Greens on October 19. Photo Bridget Aleshire
Spinach is good for salad or cooking uses. Be aware that the fastest biggest spinach may not last long once it warms up! We have found Acadia and Reflect have good bolt-resistance from outdoor spring sowings.
Bronxe Arrow lettuce. Photo by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
Grow the right lettuce variety for the conditions. Ones that do well in early spring are often useless here after the end of March, or even mid-February. I like to sow 4 varieties each time (for the attractive harvests, and to reduce the risks if one variety bolts or suffers disease): at least one red and one romaine. We have 5 lettuce seasons, with different varieties:
Early Spring (Jan – Mar), 6 sowings
Spring (April – May 15), 5 sowings
Summer (May 15 – Aug 15), 17 sowings (lots of seed!)
Fall (Aug 15 – Sept 7), 9 sowings
Winter Sept 8 – 27, 9 sowings
Baby lettuce mix can be ready in as little as 21 days from mid-spring to mid-fall. A direct-sown cut-and-come-again crop, the plants regrow and can be harvested more than once in cool seasons. Weed and thin to 1″ (2.5 cm). When 3″–4″ (7.5–10 cm) tall, cut 1” (2.5 cm) above the soil. Gather a small handful in one hand and cut with using large scissors. Immediately after harvesting, weed the just-cut area so the next cut won’t include weeds
Leaf lettuce can be harvested by the leaf much sooner than waiting for a whole head of lettuce.
Small-leaf lettuces (aka Eazyleaf, One-Cut, Multi-Cut, Multileaf): Johnny’s Salanovas, Osborne’s and High Mowing’s Eazyleaf; Tango, Oscarde, and Panisse (older varieties) too. Full-size plants can be harvested as a head, or harvested with a single cut, providing a collection of bite-sized leaves. Or just one side (or the outer leaves) of the plant can be cut and the plant will regrow for future harvests. Growing multileaf heads takes 55 days, compared to 30 days for baby lettuce.
Buckley red oakleaf single-cut multi-leaf lettuce. Photo High Mowing Seeds
Other greens can be sown in close rows for harvesting as salad crops at a height of 3”-4” (7-10 cm). These are called mustard mixes or brassica salad mixes.
Many cooking greens can be used as salad crops while plants are small, as you thin the rows of direct-sown crops.
Ways to Get Crops to Grow Faster
Sow when the conditions are right. Soil temperature is important. I have a table of soil temperatures in Year-Round Hoophouse on page 208. Vegetable Seed Germination: Optimum soil temperatures for germination and days to emergence, where known.
Grow transplants. By starting your plants in a place with close-to-ideal temperatures, rather than direct-seeding when it’s still a bit too chilly outside, you’ll get bigger plants sooner. You’ll also buy time to prepare the soil where you are going to plant out.
Find warm sheltered micro-climates, in front of a south-facing wall for example.
Make your own warm sheltered micro-climates with rowcover or low tunnels.
Take advantage of plastic mulch to warm the soil, for crops that like warmth. Regular black plastic mulch will need to be removed at the end of the growing season, but biodegradable mulch does not. However, if you are taking over part of your yard near your house, I should tell you that you will see shreds of the bioplastic next year. See Setting out biodegradable plastic mulch by hand
Rolling biodegradable plastic mulch by hand Photo Wren Vile
Consider landscape fabric with planting holes burned in, as a reusable alternative to throw-away or biodegradable mulch.
Use mixes for salads: Our general salad mix harvesting approach is to mix colors, textures and crop families. I like to balance lettuce of different kinds with chenopods (spinach, baby chard, Bull’s Blood beet leaves) and brassicas (brassica salad mix, baby tatsoi, thinnings of direct-sown brassicas, chopped young leaves of Tokyo bekana, Maruba Santoh or other Asian greens, mizuna, other ferny mustards such as Ruby Streaks, Golden Frills and Scarlet Frills). See Making salad mix
When the weather warms up, consider using shadecloth for heat-sensitive plants, particularly lettuce, but any of the cool weather greens you still have by then.
In warm weather, greens and lettuces inside a tipi of pole beans will benefit from the shade.
Ways to Get More Crops from a Small Space
With transplants, you can fit more crops into each bed throughout the season, because each crop is occupying the bed for less time than if direct-sown.
Transplanting can help you grow more successions of summer crops, as each one needs less time in the garden or field.
Grow a vertical crop on a trellis and something short in the space below it. You can even use the same trellis twice, growing tomatoes after peas, for instance.
Spinach and peas in a relay planting scheme. Photo Twin Oaks Community
Relay Planting is a method of growing short crops alongside taller ones. We have often sown peas down the center of a bed of overwintered spinach. As the peas grow tall, we trellis them, and continue harvesting the spinach. When the spinach bolts, we pull it up. This overlap of bed use lets us get more crops from a bed in less time than if we sowed the crops one after another. We have also sowed peanuts down the middle of a bed of lettuce on the same date we transplant the lettuce. We make sure to use vertical romaine lettuces rather than sprawly bibbs or leaf lettuces. We have transplanted okra down the middle of a bed of early cabbage. This does involve breaking off outer leaves of the cabbage if they are about to smother the okra.
Sow some slower-maturing crops the same time as you sow the fast ones, so you have food later as well as sooner! Carrots, turnips, cabbages, broccoli, collards, kohlrabi,
Sow some multiple-harvest crops to save work later. Greens that are harvested by the leaf, rather than the head, offer good value.
Sources for More Information
In High-Yield Vegetable Gardening, Colin McCrate and Brad Halm point out that when planning what to grow, it’s important to consider how long the crop will be in the ground, especially if you have limited space.
Cindy Conner in Grow a Sustainable Diet: Planning and Growing to Feed Ourselves and the Earth, leads you through the process of identifying suitable crops for food self-reliance, and provides a worksheet to help you determine Bed Crop Months. For each bed, determine how many months that food crop occupies that bed and so assess the productivity value of one crop compared with another. Short season crops grow to harvest size in 30-60 days, allowing series of crops to be grown in the space, and feeding people quickly. If all your nutrients are to come from your garden, you will need to pay attention to growing enough calories. Otherwise you’ll lack the energy to get to the end of the season!
Curtis Stone, in The Urban Farmer, distinguishes between Quick Crops (maturing in 60 days or less) and Steady Crops (slower maturing, perhaps harvested continuously over a period of time). He has designed a Crop Value Rating system based on 5 characteristics. To use this assessment, you look at each characteristic and decide if the particular crop gets a point for that characteristic or not. Then look for the crops with the highest number of points. Spinach gets all 5 points; cherry tomatoes only 3. The smaller your farm, the higher the crops need to score to get chosen. His 5 are:
Shorter days to maturity (fast crops = chance to plant more; give a point for 60 days or less)
High yield per linear foot (best value from the space; a point for1/2 pound/linear foot or more)
Higher price per pound (other factors being equal, higher price = more income; a point for $4 or more per pound)
Long harvest period (= more sales; point for a 4 month minimum)
Popularity (high demand, low market saturation)
Steve Solomon in Gardening When it Countsprovides tables of vegetable crops by the level of care they require. His Easy List: kale, collards, endives, chicories, spinach, cabbage, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, all cucurbits, beets, chard, sweet corn, all legumes, okra, tomatoes (followed by the more difficult eggplant, peppers).
See my article Intercropping: Minimize Your Effort While Maximizing Yields, in the Heirloom Gardener of Spring 2018.
Jennifer Poindexter on the Morning Chores Site has a nice simple web post on 16 Fast Growing Vegetables That Will Give You a Harvest Quickly
Steve Albert on the Harvest to Table website has a good post on Quick-Growing Vegetable Crops. It includes recommended fast-growing varieties of 29 crops.
