A Methodic Way to Keep the Vegetables Coming: In the Garden

“An organic farmer reveals his system for sowing seeds, mapping crops and keeping your favorite lettuces, carrots and radishes sprouting from summer into winter.

 

I’ve ordered a packet of Hakurei salad turnip seeds, and the newly installed calendar app on my phone has been informed of what I’ll need to do with them and when, so it can remind me.

 

Admittedly, neither salad turnips nor digital calendaring (make mine paper, please) is my usual fare. But after an advance look at Jean-Martin Fortier’s first book geared to gardeners — not his usual farming audience — I’m rethinking things. My subsequent conversation with the Quebec-based organic farmer only deepened that inclination.

 

“In Your Garden: The Complete Guide to Home Vegetable Gardening” won’t be published until September. To harvest more homegrown edibles through fall into early winter — and while we’re at it, gather insights into fine-tuning future growing tactics — the time to act starts today.

 

In just over 20 years, Mr. Fortier has popularized his method of small-scale, highly efficient market farming, or market gardening — human-scale agriculture on a largely direct-to-consumer model. His two how-to manuals, “The Market Gardener” and “The Winter Market Gardener,” have sold more than 300,000 copies; 10,000-plus farmers have taken his professional grower training, and his YouTube channel has more than 120,000 subscribers.

 

In all of it, method is the operative word, because Mr. Fortier exhorts farmers, and now gardeners, to think methodically.

 

“Shifting from hobby gardening to truly feeding your household requires structure and planning,” he writes. “There’s no way around it.”

 

Ideally, we would have started the growing season with a crop map — a plan for what goes where, including initial plantings and follow-up ones, or successions. When strategically executed, successions mean “you get two, three, four times the amount of vegetables per year,” Mr. Fortier said.

 

After the Garlic, the Carrots

 

We both garden in Northeastern locations, so about now, the garlic is ready to harvest, for instance, and it’s also time for a last carrot sowing. Sow seed where the garlic grew, he said, and if you mulched your garlic with straw, leave it to use on the carrots later, “and they’ll be harvested all the way till Christmas.” His favorites are sweet Nantes-type varieties.

 

It’s likewise about last call here to direct sow another row of bush beans, perhaps where summer lettuce is waning, or fall peas (a short-stature variety will mature about a week earlier than a tall one).

 

If this year’s succession plan had been firmed up ahead of time and I had sown seeds, I would have young transplants of broccoli, cauliflower, kale and cabbage headed soon to spots that are about to come empty in the garden. Next year, I’ll start some in June for transplanting 30 days later.

 

Mr. Fortier is a fan of daikon and other winter radishes, but doesn’t direct sow them. He starts a range of them — from traditional white to the colorful watermelon radish, plus the black radish — in cell trays in June instead. After a month they are transplanted out, which ensures perfect spacing: four inches apart within 10-inch-apart rows. His young plants are covered with insect netting or a row cover for pest control, as are all Brassica family members.

 

I probably have another couple of weeks to direct sow more beets; mesclun and other lettuces offer a longer window, into early September.

 

Be prepared with row-cover fabric for when frosts threaten late-season sowings, but not the extra-thick version. Mr. Fortier keeps two regular-weight layers (such as Agribon 19) on hand instead. “You can put one on in October,” he said, “and then if it’s really cold mid-November, you can put a second one over it.”

 

In early September I’ll sow that Hakurei turnip, a sweet white variety that “doesn’t taste like a turnip,” he said, to enjoy raw. Until mid-September, even up north, Asian greens like tatsoi and bok choy, as well arugula, can be sown. With spinach, Mr. Fortier waits until late August or early September, and enjoys it until Christmas. (I’ve gathered some regional vegetable gardening calendars for help scheduling succession dates nearer you.)

 

For late-season successions, remember: Shorter days loom. To take this into account, many growers add 10 days or so to the days-to-harvest listed on seed packets, backing up to an earlier start.

 

Raised Beds — But Not Like You Think

 

The foundation for Mr. Fortier’s plan of continued harvests is growing in permanent raised beds, but not raised by wood or corrugated-metal walls. They are raised “with a shovel,” he said, to form 30-inch-wide rectangular strips of soil four to six inches high by digging out 18-inch-wide pathways between.

 

“Working from a standardized bed width really, really moves the needle,” he said, “and it makes it so simple to organize and orchestrate and calculate things.”

 

His book includes charts showing how each crop fits that 30-inch metric, and likewise continuing down the row, how each forms its own grid-like pattern. “From what I’ve seen, people are planting with no real patterns,” Mr. Fortier said, “but you need a pattern.”

 

There is one inch between carrots within rows that are six inches apart, for example; beets are two and a half inches apart with 10 inches between rows, mesclun two and six. It may look tighter than what you’re doing now; that’s also part of the method.

 

“Everything starts with better crop spacing,” he said of his bio-intensive system, “because what’s on the seed packages today, for me, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s not optimized in any way or shape.”

 

Other benefits of the 30-inch beds: You can work by hand from either side, and step across without ever stepping onto the soil of the beds, which are managed with tools that fit the scale of the no-till plots.

 

Mr. Fortier’s standby: his broadfork, which loosens soil deeply with multiple long tines without turning it over.

 

Weeding has likewise been rethought. “Don’t weed, cultivate. Don’t weed cultivate. I could say it over and over and over,” he said. The U-shaped blade of a stirrup hoe, when pulled in either direction, slices just below the surface, cutting weeds at the root, but also loosening and aerating the topmost soil layer.

 

Making Room for Green Manure

 

An essential succession to accommodate: green manure, or cover crops, “plants you grow not to harvest but to nourish the soil itself,” writes Mr. Fortier.

 

“If you grow a crop in a bed that had a cover crop prior and one that didn’t, you can see the difference,” Mr. Fortier said. Summer is a great time to sow them, perhaps a mix like field peas with oats.

 

“If you have a few beds that are free, get the seeds and just scatter them over the bed and then rake them in, and that’s it,” he said. “You’re preparing for next year in a smart way.”

 

Here again, no tilling. After its run, cut the green manure down with a weed-whacker, use the broadfork to open the soil a bit, then shovel some soil from the aisles over the remains and top it with a dark tarp that excludes light.

 

“Come back in two, three weeks, and it’s all gone,” Mr. Fortier said. “It’s digested because you’ve put some soil over it and because you’ve opened up the soil to bring oxygen,” he said. “That’s going to activate microorganisms; they’re going to be excited and come and chew it up. It’s amazing.”

 

Noted in my new calendar app, as per Mr. Fortier: Sow some amazement, wherever space allows.” [1]

 

1. A Methodic Way to Keep the Vegetables Coming: In the Garden. Roach, Margaret.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Jul 14, 2026.