High five for cedar-surrounded shady gardening!Trina wrote: ↑Wed 19-Jan-2022, 06:38 I am in zone 5. I am only 3 years in to veggie gardening. I don’t see that I can do a large amount of succession gardening. I am surrounded by a cedar forest as well so I believe my sunlight is restricted to 6 hours a day from May to September.
Any guidance is appreciated.
I'm learning how to work in a light-limited situation too, and keeping the native forest around is really important. I hope you love the cedars.I think the concept of succession still works even if on a shorter timescale. In zone 2b where I grew up, the idea of relay cropping worked even in little ways: like planting radishes and parsnips in the same row, the radishes 'mark the row' and are harvested before the parsnips start to take on any size. Gardening was only realistic for just over 4 months between thaw and freeze-up, but that is still enough time to have two crops of carrots and some other vegetables, timed a bit apart.
I'm also finding that transplanting is a much bigger part of gardening in zones 5 and up, especially in areas where seedlings are vulnerable to excess moisture and slugs. So rather than planting the whole garden in a weekend, all crop types, it works better to plant (inside or outdoors) different crops in succession. It helps me to think of 'March inside start brussels sprouts', 'April outside sow parsley' as succession.
I'd love to hear from you what you find to be successful in your shady spot. Do you have any luck with beans or cowpeas?
