How to Grow and Use Cut-and-Come-Again Crops

Why keep buying more seed packets or taking trips out to the local nursery for more young vegetable plants when you can choose plants that will keep on coming back? Cut-and-come-again crops hold true to their name by sprouting again even after you cut them, revealing additional bountiful harvests.

These generous plants are often leafy green vegetable varieties, perfect for salad mixes. Not only do they offer multiple harvests, but also they are also very easy to grow. You can grow them close together with optimal results, because they require little space. With healthy soil and proper irrigation, these plants will usually flourish with hardly any problems. Just keep in mind your climate conditions, exposure to sun, and location. Specific requirements will vary from crop to crop, but in general vegetables grown for their foliage, such as lettuce, need less sun than those grown for their fruit, such as tomatoes or squash. So you can grow cut-and-come-again vegetables even if you have limited sunlight in your garden.

They are very successful when planted in raised beds, but can grow when sowed in the ground, in cold frames or in greenhouses, in containers and even indoors under artificial lights as well. With many options as to where they can be planted, cut-and-come-again crops can grow successfully, with proper care, throughout the year.

These plants are also low-maintenance in the sense that when you cut off their tasty leaves for harvest, you can cut almost to the ground without risk of damage. They will grow back quickly, revealing more young leaves ripe for the picking.

Great cut-and-come-again plant options include: leafy lettuce, dandelion, chervils, arugula (shown), mustard greens, mizuna, Chinese broccoli and more.
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Peruse insightful articles with step-by-step instructions for growing great root crops in the Horticulture Smart Gardening Techniques: Root Crops.

Want to have a more “green” lifestyle? Learn how in The Self-Sufficiency Handbook.

Discover everything you need to know to start your own mini farm with Brett L. Markham’s Mini Farming.

Learn simple and sustainable ways to grow top-quality organic vegetables with help from Eliot Coleman’s The New Organic Grower.

Make your garden tasks easier, quicker and more comfortable with a pair of Stretch Collection with Leather Palms gloves.