I believe I can ID your purple long-leaved plant. Check out the link below and see if that's what you're talking about.

Here is a link that might be useful: Purple Heart

Dawn,

YES! That is the plant! Thank you for helping me identify it...even with only a written description and no picture. You Rock!

Sonya

Sonya,

You're welcome.

My dad and mom had it in a flower bed beside the front porch where it attempted to spread and take over the world. They had black gumbo clay soil and I haven't found too many desirable plants that truly are invasive in clay soil. The ones that generally tolerate dry clay in summer cannot tolerate really wet clay in late winter/early spring, or vice versa. However, purple heart can tolerate anything/everything you throw at it. So, it can be invasive but I don't think that necessarily means it will be. My dad loved it because other than four o'clocks and cannas, there wasn't a lot that loved his black gumbo clay, and it is strikingly beautiful with that rich purple color.

Your title "more planting" made me chuckle because it sounds like me. I never really stop planting. By the time the fenced garden (a mix of veggies, herbs and flowers), containers and flower beds are finally fully planted, I'm already planting succession plants for cool-season veggies that are finishing up. In a sense, I never stop planting, although there's not much that I plant in July, which is sort of in between the spring/summer garden season and putting plants in to the ground for the fall garden. In a year like last year, I won't even attempt a fall garden if rain isn't falling here.

Today or tomorrow I likely will put the last plants/seeds in the ground in the big garden, and in the auxiliary Three Sisters Garden that sits just across the driveway from the main garden. Then I can start some flower seeds to plug into the corner flower bed when the larkspur amd poppies finish up. By the time I am plugging those small flowers into the flower bed, it will be time to start veggies in paper cups to plug into the onion bed and potato bed after they are harvested in June. It's always something! (And I say that happily.)

I wasn't always a constant planter. In the early 2000s, after we'd been here a couple of years and I had a much smaller vegetable garden, I started focusing on raising succession plants of more heat-tolerant plants that I could plug into the beds when the cold-tolerant plants were done. From there it simply snowballed, and now I succession plant like an obsessed gardener. I just don't see any point in wasting a square inch of soil after working so hard to improve the dense red clay and turn it into nice soil.

I do have some sense. If I cannot get flowers in the ground by the end of June, I stop trying. After June, it is too hot for tiny flowers to establish, except for the most heat-tolerant ones like zinnias or globe amaranth. One year it was a cool (well, relatively speaking) and rainy summer (2004), and we had a large detached garage being built. They finished it in mid-July, I think it was, and I sowed seed of zinnias, verbena bonariensis, amaranths and sunflowers on its west side where there was bare soil. Defying logic, they sprouted and were in bloom before the end of August. That was rare. Usually in July I cannot water the unimproved clay enough to raise anything from seed. In some ways 2007 was a lot like 2004 but warmer, but I didn't try sowing seed in July because the minute the rain stopped falling, the oven heat turned on and we started roasting here. That was the beginning, in my county, of the 2008 drought although we didn't realize that yet. I'd love to have a cool, rainy summer again, but they're fairly rare for us obviously.

Dawn

I've always been just a plant some plants/seeds in spring and let them grow and harvest what comes my way and when they die they are done...I didn't know much about succession planting, and honestly, still don't. I want to learn sooo much and it seems that the spring/summer goes by so fast and winter hangs around so long.

This year I couldn't even till a decent sized little area in the backyard...but I did turn the north side flowerbed into a little area to plant the tomatoes, squash and peppers. I'm planted the carrots in the front just to see what happens.

Then I got the idea for the beans and peas and sunflowers...

and I now have some zinnia and Alyssum seeds that I'm thinking of planting in a little area between my back patio and storm shelter...don't know how it will do, but what the heck, it's worth a try.

Where can I learn more about succession planting and timing things just right, besides reading as much as I can from ya'll?

For the initial planting of crops, use the linked Garden Planning Guide from OSU.

For succession planting, I think that the process is more something you learn by experience since the weather conditions are highly variable and you cannot follow a strict succession schedule because you don't know how long your initial crop will remain productive. You just develop a feel for it based on what you've observed in previous years. For example, some years the bush beans just produce and produce and produce for many weeks, while other years, they are more short-lived. I usually start new rounds of bush beans every 3 or 4 weeks so there's always new plants coming into production as older ones are fading.

It is the same way with summer squash. I like to always have new squash plants in the pipeline, but then I have oodles of space, so I always have room to be starting more. Right now, in the ground, I have the 4 original plants that have been in the ground maybe 6 to 8 weeks. They have been producing for 2 or 3 weeks and are still look perfectly healthy and still are going strong. In a different location in the garden, I have the first succession planting, which really is my main planting. It consists of about 19 or 20 plants raised from seed, and there's 4 or 5 varieties in that bunch. They began flowering last week and will have their first harvestable squash this week. Then, this week, I started the third round, which is only six plants. They will grow for a few weeks, and then begin producing sometime in June. Usually it is in June when the first wave of squash bugs show up and start hitting the plants hard. If this year is typical, they'll hit the older plants first and I'll do what I can to control them, but I won't lose any sleep over it because I have younger, healthier plants in the pipeline.

You can get into trouble doing this though. Last year we had no squash bugs and no SVBs, so my original plants produced all summer long. However, because it was so hot and dry, I hadn't started any succession plants anyway because I figured that I'd be watering all the time, and figured the less I had to water, the better. If there are no squash bugs and no SVBs this year, I'll have the freezers full by mid-June and we'll be eating squash, giving it away, and probably canning some as pickles.

You have to know how long a given veggie produces for you in your garden with your soil and your weather conditions to know whether you need to have a succession crop planted. That comes with experience.

With sweet corn, I plant my early corn in late March of most years and harvest it in late May. I plant my mid-season corn in April and harvest it in June, and I plant my late-season corn in early May and harvest it in July or August. What I usually do is wait until the early corn is knee-high and when it reaches that height, I plant the mid-season corn. When the mid-season corn is knee-high, I plant the late-season corn. I've tried planting them with a certain number of weeks separating them, but that doesn't work out as well consistently because the corn sown later often catches up with the corn sown earlier since the later corn is growing in much warmer soil and air temps. So, for me, sowing each succession corn crop once the earlier crop is knee high works out better.

With some crops, I don't do succession sowings, but rather plant a number of varieties with different DTMs so that the harvest is spread out over a larger period even though the seeds of all varieties are sown more or less at the same time. I planted 5 okra varieties, and each one on the list produces slightly later than the previous one. That helps spread out the harvest somewhat, and I do the same thing with winter squash, cantaloupe/muskmelons, and cucumbers. Oh, and with tomatoes. My tomato plants have a wide range of DTMs from about 52 days to about 85 days. I will do a separate planting for fall tomatoes if the conditions warrant it and if there is enough rainfall that I think I'll be able to get a crop. I didn't bother with fall tomatoes last year because we were so busy with wildfires in July and August that I barely even entered the garden. I get better production from fresh plants for fall than from the older ones I transplanted in March or April. Here where I live, July and August are brutally hard on tomato plants with lots of heat, little rainfall and oodles of spider mites, grasshoppers, leaf-footed bugs, blister beetles and stink bugs. Fresh, new plants withstand the pests a whole lot better than stressed, older plants that are getting tired. I just start my fall tomatoes about 5 weeks before I intend to transplant them into the ground and I raise the seedlings outdoors in the heat so they are used to the heat and intense sunlight from the minute they sprout.

There's a certain rhythm you develop within your own garden when it comes to succession planting, but a lot depends on how much space you have. I do a lot of combination planting. For example, I plant rows of bush beans alternating either with rows of potatoes or tomatoes. As the bush beans come out, the potatoes or tomatoes expand to fill that space. I interplanted lettuce with small dwarf tomato plants this year. As the lettuce plants come out, the dwarf tomatoes expand to fill their space. I often plant onions, carrots and lettuce in between tomato plants. As the tomato plants enlarge, the carrots, lettuce and onions are coming out, leaving the space solely for the tomatoes. I plant okra slightly further apart than usual, and plant watermelons to serve as a living ground cover under the okra. I often plant rows of peppers alongside okra or tomato plants where the taller okra or tomato plants will give the peppers some shade in the hottest summer months. This is especially important with sweet bell peppers since the large bell peppers often sunscald if exposed to too much sunlight.

So, think about ways you can garden creatively that will allow you to interplant different veggies together in the same space.

My Three Sisters Garden is about 400 square feet and has the late corn growing in it. There's Old-Timey Cornfield Pumpkins planted around the perimeter and in the middle of the corn rows so the pumpkins will serve as a living ground cover/mulch to keep the soil cool and inhibit germination of weed seeds or shade out the weeds after they sprout. Once the late corn is knee-high, I'll sow Genuine Cornfield bean seeds in between the corn plants and those beans will climb the corn. On the fence around the three sisters garden, I'm growing decorative gourds (Gremlin Gourd mix and birdhouse gourds) and Tahitian Melon (which is a squash). At one end of the bed, I put a few leftover okra plants, and more pumpkin plants. It is a delightful jungle by the time the plantings are a couple of months old and I am getting all kinds of produce from a space that in some gardens would be growing nothing but rows of corn.

The mid-season corn is planted a little differently. In that area, the beans are growing on the fence beside the corn planting, and the Seminole pumpkins are a good 8' away, but they'll eventually expand and take over the space occupied by the mid-season corn. By the time Seminole has spread that far, the corn should be near harvesting, but I will have to be careful not to step on the Seminole pumpkin vines while harvesting the Country Gentleman corn.

There's lots of ways to succession plant. Sometimes it means repeatedly sowing seeds of new crops to follow the others, but other times it means planting many items together so the ones that mature later fill in the space vacated by the ones that produce earlier. I find it a challenge,and a fun one at that, to see what I can plant and "get away with" doing each year, and rarely use the same combinations in the same way every year. Look at a prairie pasture. You could measure out a 3' x 3' area in our pasture, and likely find more than a dozen varieties of pasture grass in that one area and just as many wildflowers. A native woodland is the same. You don't just have the tall trees--you have understory trees, vines, ground covers, etc. So, that's what I emulate in my garden--all kinds of stuff mixed together. It might look confusing to someone who is used to straight rows of monocropping, but I know what every plant in every bed is, why it is there, and when it will produce in relation to every other plant. I do a lot of soil amending so that my soil is highly fertile and can carry a full load of plants interplanted with one another.

Generally, you don't succession plant most cool-season crops in spring because our weather gets too hot too early, but you can sow cool-season crops again for fall. As the fall garden planting dates get closer, I'll link the fall gardening guide from OSU because it has the planting dates in it for the fall garden.

Remember that you can intermingle flowers and herbs with your veggies and fruits too. I always do that.

Sweet alyssum, by the way, is a cool-season flower. If sown from seed now, it may struggle. I plant sweet alyssum in February or March and am happy if it makes it through the end of June. Some years it makes it all summer, but not in the hotter, drier years. Nasturtiums are the same way. I have a couple hundred nasturtium plants in my garden, where they are serving as a living ground over under the 200 or so tomato plants. Some years they peak in May and rapidly decline, and some years they peak in May but hang on for the whole summer. They attract lots of beneficial insects, which is why I plant so many of them. I think this year the nasturtiums may last a pretty long time because the tomato plants got off to a good, early start so are quite tall (my tallest are 7'-8' tall now) which means they are shading the nasturtiums really well. When the nasturtiums have good afternoon shade, they often make it through the whole summer, so maybe that's how it will play out this summer.

Hope this helps,

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: OSU Garden Planning Guide

Dawn, YES, your reply was extremely helpful...and *inspiring*. I just read it this morning, but last night when I went home I was thinking about the planting in succession topic. I didn't have a lot of time to spend yesterday evening, but the pole beans that I planted not too long ago are now about 6 inches tall! All the beans I planted sprouted! So I fashioned a rope type "trellis" off the privacy fence over the beans for them to climb on. It looks pretty cool actually. :) All of my sunflowers have sprouted and are about 4 inches tall now and a few of the okra and pea plants are coming up now.

I also planted some bush beans to see how they do and then started some lavendar seed...not sure where I'll be putting those once they are big enough to transplant, but I'll find someplace to let them grow.

I think I've just got the gardening/planting bug...:)