A Year of Harvests From a Small Container Collection

What this is, and isn’t

A worked succession plan, not a documented trial — four containers, each carrying two or three crops across the year rather than sitting empty once the first crop finishes. It’s a suggested rotation, not a claim that this exact four-container sequence has been run and measured as one project, and it uses the real sowing windows already checked in the UK Sowing Calendar and Grow Finder throughout.

Most container growing advice covers one crop at a time and stops. This is about what happens to that same container once the crop is finished — left empty is the most common waste of space in a small collection.

The four containers, across the year

Container	Spring (Mar-May)	Summer (Jun-Aug)	Autumn (Sep-Nov)	Winter (Dec-Feb)
1 — Medium	Cut-and-come-again salad (from Mar)	Dwarf/bush beans (sown May-Jun)	Garlic planted Oct-Dec	Garlic overwinters
2 — Large	Bush tomato (planted out after last frost)	Bush tomato continues fruiting	Quick salad catch crop once tomato’s cleared	Rests, mulched
3 — Small	Radishes (from Mar)	Basil (Apr-Jul)	Salad catch crop	Chives continue (perennial, planted spring)
4 — Medium	—	Onion sets planted Sept, not spring	Onion sets planted Sept	Onion sets overwinter

This isn’t the only valid sequence — it’s one real, workable example built from crops already covered on this site, not the single correct answer.

Container 1: salad → beans → garlic

• Spring: Cut-and-come-again salad, sown March, giving repeat cuts for 6-8 weeks per sowing.
• Summer: Once salad’s spent, clear and resow with dwarf/bush beans, sown May-June for a summer flush of pods.
• Autumn/winter: Once beans finish (roughly September), clear and plant garlic cloves October-December — garlic wants real cold to divide into a proper bulb, so this is one of the few crops actually timed for the coldest months. See is growing garlic yourself actually worth it? for hardneck vs softneck and why the October start specifically matters. Harvest the following June or July.

Container 2: tomato, then a catch crop

• Spring-summer: Bush tomato, planted out after last frost (typically late May), fruiting through summer into early autumn.
• Autumn: Once the tomato’s cleared (first frost, or once cropping has clearly slowed), a fast salad catch crop can still go in if there’s enough of the season left — cut-and-come-again salad sown as late as September will still give some picks before growth slows for winter.
• Winter: Rest the container, or top with a mulch layer, rather than leaving compost bare and exposed.

Container 3: radish → basil → salad → chives

• Spring: Radishes, sown March, ready in 3-4 weeks — one of the fastest crops on this list.
• Summer: Basil, sown April-July once it’s genuinely warm — basil is sensitive to cold and best started once the risk of a cool snap has passed.
• Autumn: A final salad catch crop.
• Perennial option: Chives, planted once in spring, can run in this container instead of the summer/autumn rotation — cut repeatedly rather than replanted each season, which trades succession flexibility for less ongoing effort.

Container 4: onion sets, autumn-planted, summer-harvested

The odd one out on this list — planted once, in September, and left through the whole autumn and winter to be harvested the following summer, rather than rotated seasonally like the other three. Onion sets planted in September give a harvest the following June or July. This container genuinely does nothing visible from October to March beyond sitting there — that’s expected, not a sign of failure.

Watering and feeding across a rotation

Every time a container changes crop, it’s worth checking whether the compost needs topping up or amending, rather than assuming it’s fine for another round. A container that’s just finished a heavy feeder (tomato, beans) benefits from fresh compost or a feed boost before the next crop goes in, more than one that’s just finished a light feeder like salad or radish.

What this costs

Not put a number on this: across a full year, the real ongoing cost is compost (topping up or replacing between rotations) and occasional plant/seed purchases, and both vary by supplier and how much you reuse versus replace. What’s genuinely worth budgeting for specifically in a rotation plan like this: more frequent small compost top-ups than a single-crop container needs, since this collection is in near-constant use.

What to actually expect from the harvest

Kept deliberately cautious, as with any plan on this site that hasn’t been run and measured as one project: the individual crops here (tomato, beans, garlic, radish, salad, basil, onions) each have real, checked information linked above. What a rotation adds isn’t a bigger harvest from any one container — it’s more total harvest across the year from the same four containers, compared to growing one crop per container and leaving it empty the rest of the time.

Frost and season caveats

Tomato and basil are frost-tender and shouldn’t go in before the local last-frost date. Garlic and onion sets are the opposite — they specifically want to be in the ground before the coldest part of winter, not after it. Radishes and salad are hardy enough to start slightly earlier or later than the ranges above with only a modest effect on how fast they grow.