Succession Sowing Salad Leaves for Fresh Harvests

Why a Little and Often Approach Wins

Every grower knows the pattern. A generous row of lettuce goes in during April, survives the slugs, and then hearts up all at once in a single fortnight. The fridge fills with tired leaves, neighbours begin to avoid eye contact over the fence, and you vow to sow less next year. By August the bed is bare and you are buying bagged rocket again.

Succession sowing breaks that cycle. Rather than one large sowing, you sow small batches every two to three weeks, so each batch is ready just as the previous one is finishing. The result is a steady trickle of tender leaves from late spring until the first hard frosts, with no gluts and no gaps. It costs a few minutes of sowing every fortnight and rewards you every single day.

Pick Crops That Suit the System

The best candidates are quick, cut-and-come-again crops that you can harvest repeatedly from the same plant.

• Loose-leaf lettuce such as 'Salad Bowl', 'Lollo Rossa' and 'Red Salad Bowl' — pick the outer leaves and the plant keeps cropping for weeks.
• Cos and butterhead types like 'Little Gem' and 'Tom Thumb' — slower, but worth it when you want a proper hearted lettuce for a plate of tomatoes.
• Rocket — ready in three or four weeks. Wild rocket is slower to bolt than the salad type and will often overwinter in a sheltered spot.
• Spinach and leaf beet — 'Perpetual Spinach' and 'Medania' give substantial leaves and cope with cooler weather far better than lettuce.
• Mizuna and mustard — excellent gap fillers, especially in late summer when flea beetle makes rocket hard work.

How Often to Sow

As a rule, sow a small batch every two to three weeks from early March to the middle of September. Growth rates change through the season, so adjust as follows.

• March and April: sow every three weeks under cover, in modules or a cold frame. Germination is slow, but plants will be ready to go out as the soil warms.
• May to July: sow every fortnight. Choose bolt-resistant varieties and sow in partial shade, because heat and long days send lettuce and spinach to seed quickly.
• August: sow every two to three weeks directly where the plants are to grow. Warm soil means fast germination, and autumn salads are often the best of the year.
• September: one final sowing of winter-hardy lettuce such as 'Winter Density', plus spinach, under cloches or fleece for picking into the new year.

Sowing in Practice

Keep each batch small — a couple of metres of row or a seed tray of modules is plenty for most households. Sowing little and often only stays manageable if each sowing takes minutes.

• Fill modules with peat-free multipurpose compost, firm it gently and water before sowing.
• Sow two or three seeds per module, about a centimetre deep, then thin to the strongest seedling once they are up.
• For direct sowing, draw a drill about a centimetre deep and 15cm from its neighbour. Sow thinly, then thin salad crops to 5cm apart for baby leaves, or 20–25cm for hearted lettuce.
• Water the drill before sowing rather than after, so seed is not washed out or dislodged.
• Label every batch with the crop and the date. It sounds fussy, but it is the only way to know what is ready and when the next sowing is due.

Looking After Each Batch

Salad crops are shallow-rooted and thirsty. Water little and often in dry spells, aiming for moist rather than sodden soil, and mulch between rows with compost to hold that moisture in. In midsummer, a strip of shade netting stretched over hoops can mean the difference between sweet leaves and bitter, bolted ones.

Slugs are the main enemy of young seedlings, so water in the morning rather than the evening, keep nearby grass short, and set a beer trap or two. Flea beetle riddles rocket and mizuna with small holes in hot, dry weather; keeping the bed well watered and covering it with fine insect mesh helps enormously. A light liquid feed every fortnight keeps cut-and-come-again crops producing, but do not overdo it or the leaves turn soft and sappy.

Harvesting to Keep the Chain Going

Pick in the cool of the morning, taking the outer leaves from loose-leaf types and leaving the crown to regrow. For baby leaf, cut the whole row about 3cm above the soil with scissors and it will usually give you two or three more cuttings. Plunge the leaves straight into cold water, dry them, and they will keep for days in the fridge.

Above all, keep sowing. The most reliable trick is to sow the next batch the moment you harvest the one before, and to keep a small tray of seedlings waiting in a cold frame or on a windowsill. Do that, and there will always be something fresh to pick, whatever the weather decides to do.