First harvest week — radishes out, lettuce in

It's here. End of May, and the first things are ripe. Radishes you planted mid-April are now crunchy and sharp. Cut-and-come-again lettuce leaves are hand-sized. Chives are showing their second flush. This is the moment when gardening finally pays off.

But: now you don't just harvest. You sow at the same time. Otherwise by end of June you have empty patches in the bed where nothing grows — and that's the end of the season for that square metre.

What's ripe this week

Radishes (4 weeks after sowing): try one before yanking them all out. If it's too hard or pithy (white-spongy inside), wait 2–3 days. If it's crunchy + slightly sharp — go, all out. Radishes go hollow and pithy fast, there's no soft transition.

Cut-and-come-again lettuce (4–5 weeks after sowing): never harvest whole heads, pick outer leaves. New ones grow inside. With the picking method you have 3–4 weeks of lettuce from the same plant.

Chives, parsley, thyme: now the first trim. Just above the soil for chives (leave 5 cm), targeted older shoots on parsley and thyme.

Early carrots: not yet. May sowings come earliest in July. If you have carrots from the March batch: feel them, if the crown feels larger than 2 cm, try one. Otherwise patience.

What you sow immediately

Here's the most important rule of the season: When you harvest radishes, you sow lettuce in the same gap. When you harvest lettuce, you sow radishes. Succession planting in the same season, on the same surface.

Cut-and-come-again lettuce for wave two: fast-growing, doesn't bolt as quickly as head lettuce. I take the BIO lettuce seed set 14 varieties* — 14 different varieties to rotate, a tin lasts 3+ years.

Head-lettuce seedlings instead of sowing: in May, sowing takes too long, you lose 4 weeks. Seedlings are faster. The Sperli BIO lettuce (head lettuce) Matilda* is heat-resistant — doesn't bolt as quickly when summer comes. That's gold from June onwards.

Radish succession: yes, just do it again. They grow in any gap, cost almost nothing, are ripe again in 4 weeks. Last sensible sowing: mid-August (otherwise too little warmth for the last bulb formation).

Bush tomato via seedling: if you still have a gap in the raised bed, Sperli BIO tomato Diplom (salad tomato)* is a solid choice — productive, blight-resistant. Plant the seedling now, it bears in August.

My weekly plan

• Today: all radishes out, one hour cut-and-come-again lettuce harvest + sow the next wave.
• Wednesday: trim herbs, try carrots.
• Saturday: head-lettuce seedlings into the bed, fill tomato gaps.
• Next week: radish succession into the now-empty spots.

If you keep this rhythm, you have something fresh from the bed continuously through October, without gaps. The effort is small — 30 minutes a day — but it has to be consistent.

What most people get wrong

They harvest everything at once, get excited, and don't sow anything back. Three weeks later the bed is empty, and they wait until next March for the next season. Pity — the soil is warm, the days are long, two more generations of lettuce would be easy.

Harvest time isn't a moment. It's a rhythm from May to October.

🦔 Stachi

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Note: Links marked with * are Amazon partner links (amazon.de). If you order through them, Erntezeit earns a small commission — the price for you stays the same. Seed is one of the few things where "cheap" doesn't mean "worse" — organic seed from these sets germinates reliably, I have both Sperli and the BIO set in the cupboard.