A good gardener will use crop rotation for two reasons: to ensure good soil nutrient supply and for pest control.
Crops such as peas and beans (legumes) put nutrients back in the soil as they grow because they have little nodes that take in nitrogen and then ‘fix’ it in the soil. Because of these benefits you will want to keep rotating your beans and peas all around your garden so you can build the nitrogen stores in the soil.
Some pests and diseases can lay dormant in the soil over the winter months, just waiting for you to pop that vegetable back in the ground in the spring. By changing the location of the vegetable you help to reduce the infestation of pests and diseases specific to that plant.
Crop rotation can be used in your vegetable garden regardless of the size of the garden. It is highly recommended that you make a map of the crop layout of your garden each season. This will help you to remember where plants were placed last year and how you will rotate the crops for this season.
For any size garden a great way to practice crop rotation is to divide the garden into four quarters. Each quadrant can grow specific vegetable and then just rotate the crops in the quadrant clock-wise each year. You can also change the location of the crops within each quadrant if you like. By using the rotation of a quadrant you will grow the same crops in the same part of the garden once every four years. This is a fantastic way of rotating your crops. Now of course this sounds great in theory and should work for the most part, but in reality you just may run into a situation where you shouldn’t plant the same family year to year in the same spot, or where two plants can’t be side by side in the garden, etc.
For example, you shouldn’t plant tomatoes, peppers and eggplant in the same spot as the potatoes were last year, and corn always grows best where you had legume species the year before. Just do the best you can and keep good records so you can make adjustments the following year.
The purpose for this column is not for you to perfectly place your crops in the garden year after year but to get you thinking about good soil nutrient management. You may have been planting the same plant in the same spot year after year and have been complaining that this plant doesn’t seem to grow like it used to. So do your best to rotate the crops based on what your garden has to offer for space and sun exposure and give some thought into the future as you place the crops for this season. Crop rotation is just another tool you can use to help you become the best gardener you can be and to produce the best vegetables.
