Be mindful of rotating your crops
Changing plots year to year interrupts cycles of pests and disease Helen Chesnut
QI am looking for some sort of logical pattern to follow in shifting the locations of the main types of vegetables from year to year.
A: This moving around of vegetables is called crop rotation. Almost every source of gardening information gives a specific routine for doing this, but the main point is to avoid, as far as possible, growing all but the perennial vegetables in the same spot from year to year. Aim for a minimum rest period of three years between a return to the same site.
The shifting of crops by type helps to interrupt cycles of common insect pests and diseases. This is especially important for cabbage family vegetables (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, turnip), tomatoes, and the onion, garlic and leek group.
The movement from year to year can also be designed to capitalize on soil conditions left behind from a previous year’s crop. An example: Peas and beans, if the roots are dug under at the end of the season, will leave nitrogen behind because these vegetables are nitrogen-fixing legumes. That plot is then a natural for housing nitrogen-hungry plants like the cabbage family, corn, tomatoes or onions in the following year.
Here’s just one possible profile of a plot and its plantings over the course of four years. If you don’t grow potatoes, or if you grow them in open-ended cardboard boxes or grow-bags, eliminate year one and follow a three-year rotation.
Year 1. Potatoes. Prepare soil with ample compost and a fertilizer for acid loving plants.
Year 2. Peas and beans. Lime the soil generously.
Year 3. Cabbage family, corn, tomatoes, onions. Add lime and ample compost or/and composted manure. These are hungry plants. Tomatoes and cabbage family vegetables do particularly well in soil amended with seaweed in the fall.
Year 4. Roots. These will benefit from the pervious year’s soil conditioning.
Except for in the potato year, the plot will benefit from a dusting of lime and a balanced fertilizer as well as compost prior to planting.