Ralph Sargent Bailey, “Plan Your Victory Garden for Three-Shift Production,” House Beautiful, February 1944.
Producing for Three-Quarters of the Year
As Mr. Bailey explains above, in World War II it wasn't just planes and munitions plants that were on a "strict production schedule," but also "our Victory Gardens--those food factories that are such vital elements of home-front industry"!
Simply planting a garden is not enough! What was called for was continuous replanting; three full shifts of production for those who had the luxury of a long growing season: spring, summer, and fall. Not only is this imperative for getting the most out of your square feet by reusing the soil multiple times in a season, but it can be the only practical way to grow some vegetables: while eggplants and peppers thrive in the heat of midsummer, collard greens go to seed and grow bitter, and other brassicas simply fail to thrive.
Having gardened previously in the fine, but very cold, state of Wisconsin, I was determined to take full advantage of the extended, mild, mid-Atlantic growing season in Delaware -- but alas, we ran into some difficulties . . .
Simply planting a garden is not enough! What was called for was continuous replanting; three full shifts of production for those who had the luxury of a long growing season: spring, summer, and fall. Not only is this imperative for getting the most out of your square feet by reusing the soil multiple times in a season, but it can be the only practical way to grow some vegetables: while eggplants and peppers thrive in the heat of midsummer, collard greens go to seed and grow bitter, and other brassicas simply fail to thrive.
Having gardened previously in the fine, but very cold, state of Wisconsin, I was determined to take full advantage of the extended, mild, mid-Atlantic growing season in Delaware -- but alas, we ran into some difficulties . . .
Rows Strike Again
Spring Shift, ibid. How rows made succession planting exponentially more difficult:
Each crop has different dates when they can first go into the soil, and beyond that, different growth cycles and days to maturity. In our lettuce/radish row, for instance, lettuce reaches maturity in 45-55 days and can be selectively harvested for many days thereafter. However radishes can go from seed to harvest in as few as 20 days if you want them young and tender. Therefore, we couldn’t replace the whole row at once without letting the radish half lie fallow for a while. And trying to keep up with replacing such short-season crops as radishes can be exhausting because of how often you can replant them.
So why not replace them with something longer-slower growing after your first harvest you ask?
Well, you have to replace them with something that uses the same spacing scheme as what was in the former row. When you plant in rows for a small garden, as we did, each row is spaced differently because each contains different crops. The tomatoes needed a heck of a lot more room than the carrots, and carrots more room than the spinach. I couldn’t replace the radishes with broccoli or squash, because there wouldn’t have been nearly enough space.
Furthermore, you want to be sure that your succession crops are of a different family than the plant that preceded them in that patch of soil; that way, soil diseases, pests, and other nuisances are ‘kept on their toes’ as it were, by the continual variation.
Each crop has different dates when they can first go into the soil, and beyond that, different growth cycles and days to maturity. In our lettuce/radish row, for instance, lettuce reaches maturity in 45-55 days and can be selectively harvested for many days thereafter. However radishes can go from seed to harvest in as few as 20 days if you want them young and tender. Therefore, we couldn’t replace the whole row at once without letting the radish half lie fallow for a while. And trying to keep up with replacing such short-season crops as radishes can be exhausting because of how often you can replant them.
So why not replace them with something longer-slower growing after your first harvest you ask?
Well, you have to replace them with something that uses the same spacing scheme as what was in the former row. When you plant in rows for a small garden, as we did, each row is spaced differently because each contains different crops. The tomatoes needed a heck of a lot more room than the carrots, and carrots more room than the spinach. I couldn’t replace the radishes with broccoli or squash, because there wouldn’t have been nearly enough space.
Furthermore, you want to be sure that your succession crops are of a different family than the plant that preceded them in that patch of soil; that way, soil diseases, pests, and other nuisances are ‘kept on their toes’ as it were, by the continual variation.
Not a Pretty Garden Picture:
It's surprisingly hard to capture the whole garden in a single shot, small as it is. Note overgrown but still producing tomatoes, holes from digging up carrots, still-happy kale in foreground, turnips off to the right.
Solution: Plan Better!
Lonely Brussel . . . Diagnosis of our operational problem? We did not plan for our third (or even second!) shift ahead of time and were caught sorely unaware. We didn’t have a strict timeline, in part because the weather has been unpredictable and different from years past (thanks global warming!). Indeed, nearly all of our early replanting efforts failed in the extreme heat of late August and early September -- a lonely brussels sprout stands where the potato patch was, instead of a mighty forest, alas!
However, the embarrassing truth must be told. We didn’t plan for replanting mostly because the plan we selected didn’t do it for us; it didn't come with provisions for replanting and succession-planting. And I was cutting corners. I assumed that with the whole summer looming ahead of me, I’d have plenty of time to ‘figure it out’ on the fly. Not so.
So only at the very tail end Summer, the weather has been cool enough that the heat won’t stop our cool-weather crop seeds from germinating. But now I have fears that anything we start in the soil won’t have a long enough growing season to come to fruit before the first frosts hit – even with the unseasonable heat. It is quite the conundrum.
However, the embarrassing truth must be told. We didn’t plan for replanting mostly because the plan we selected didn’t do it for us; it didn't come with provisions for replanting and succession-planting. And I was cutting corners. I assumed that with the whole summer looming ahead of me, I’d have plenty of time to ‘figure it out’ on the fly. Not so.
So only at the very tail end Summer, the weather has been cool enough that the heat won’t stop our cool-weather crop seeds from germinating. But now I have fears that anything we start in the soil won’t have a long enough growing season to come to fruit before the first frosts hit – even with the unseasonable heat. It is quite the conundrum.
Plan, For the Remainder of the Season . . .
MONSTER CARROT In the end, the arugula and other odd survivors of our September plantings became our only third shift, plus some beans and radishes we planted in late August. We are still hauling in tomatoes somehow, so we've let those be. We only recently tore down the popcorn stalks (we were supposed to let them stand until dead), and our kale and broccoli kept seeming like they were on the verge of making a comeback from the mid-summer slump, so we never yanked them or replanted!
The name of the game for the rest of the season is slowly ripping out and harvesting everything we can, then replanting with a cover crop that will hopefully have time to germinate and become green manure over the winter, fixing nitrogen and replenishing the soil. To be frank, another major factor keeping us from doing more is simply that with the full onslaught of the semester -- visiting scholars and talks by friends, research trips, family visits, drafts due, grant and fellowship applications, and scheduling/preparing your own talks can make it difficult to do as much with the garden as you want to!
The name of the game for the rest of the season is slowly ripping out and harvesting everything we can, then replanting with a cover crop that will hopefully have time to germinate and become green manure over the winter, fixing nitrogen and replenishing the soil. To be frank, another major factor keeping us from doing more is simply that with the full onslaught of the semester -- visiting scholars and talks by friends, research trips, family visits, drafts due, grant and fellowship applications, and scheduling/preparing your own talks can make it difficult to do as much with the garden as you want to!
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