Easyy crop rotation
Split your growing space to keep the soil sweet
There are great benefits to crop rotation – not just for large-scale vegetable production but small gardens, too. Reducing the spread of soil-borne pests and diseases means you’ll need to worry less about a means to control them, plus it helps prevent the depletion of nutrients in the soil.
In an easy-to-manage, three-year plan, you’ll just need to divide your growing space into three. To start off, enrich your beds with well-rotted manure or compost and grow potatoes in one area, which will feed on the nutrients and break up the soil. In the following year, grow legumes, such as beans or peas, in this section as they’ll add nitrogen to the soil, and this will be really appreciated by brassicas in the third year.
In the second area grow brassicas in the first year, followed by potatoes and then roots such as carrots, celery or celeriac. In the third area, start by growing onions, followed by brassicas and, in the third year, potatoes. The idea is really simple, you just try to mix up brassicas, potatoes, legumes, onions and roots and avoid growing them in the same spot in consecutive years.
It’s always a good idea to mulch in between two crops, particularly if both are heavy feeders like brassicas and potatoes, or you could include green manure in your planning. If your soil’s acidic you might want to apply some lime to it in autumn before growing brassicas to help prevent club root disease.