harvest THEN sweep, as you figured out.
also, if fighting passive mobs, always seed THEN spoil. seed does not aggrivate the mob, and spoil does, so if you seed first you save yourself from roughly one bonk to the head.
edit: if fighting aggressive mobs, same thing. because range of seed > range of spoil, the longer range allows you to start sooner if you seed then spoil a mob running at you than it does to spoil then seed. thus, you avoid one more bonk.