Rotation

[charlesModerator]

 question from Janet, by email

Last year John built a cage round a 8×9′ bed which we used for brassicas last Winter. Only a few survived the harsh weather so I wondered if you thought it would be OK to plant brassicas in that area again. The history of the area is before we got the plot it hadn’t been cultivated in many years, it had been used as a dumping ground so hopefully no past diseases should be present in the soil. March last year we planted potatoes in the area. Later on sprouts, PSB, WSB & black kale which is still going strong, everything else collapsed under the harsh conditions. Last year it had been double dug trenched & manured & in late March we put a thick layer of 15-18 month old manure on top with no digging.

[charlesModerator]

 Yes I would grow brassicas again. Some people grow them two years out of three with success. Having the soil healthy will help and the extra organic matter is good for them too.

The whole question of rotation is usually made to sound too complicated and it is more flexible than often presented. A good guide is to work out what you want to grow, which is unlikely to fall neatly into the normal categories of rotation such as potatoes – brassicas – legumes – salads, alliums or whatever.  Then simply rotate as much as possible, according to your desired harvests, so that vegetables of the same plant family *brassicas, alliums, umbellifers etc) are not grown consecutively, except in unusual circumstances such as you outline here.

In my gardens it is often just two years between lettuce and tomatoes, and three of four years between alliums and legumes, depending partly on when space becomes available in summer for plantings of autumn and winter vegetables.

 

[Johnny PhantomMember]

Hello Charles,

I was wondering if it’s possible to rotate simply between a plant type and salad leaves? The example I’m thinking of is rotating between brassicas, then salad leaves (the appropriate varieties – not kale, for example), then brassicas again, then salad leaves, and so on…
Is this something you’ve tried?

Thanks in advance,

JP

[charlesModerator]

 yes indeed, I have used many ‘tight ‘ rotations of two or three years and growth has been good. I think the key, as is so often the case, is healthy soil.

Incidentally tomatoes are often an issue because most of us want them more than cucumber and melon, causing a build up of solanum soil pests as tomatoes are grown every other or even every year. But again, I have good crops every other year. I did grow a few grafted tomato plants (onto pest resistant rootstocks) and was impressed by their vigorous growth – but picked no more fruit by season’s end! The plants were too exuberant and made lots of leaf; so I wonder if all the extra cost of grafted plants is worthwhile….

[Nick vowlesMember]

I rotate my staple crops for two reasons.
One is because of the soil structure. Harvesting potatoes is almost as damaging to the soil structure as digging it so I think rotating this soil disrupting crop is a good idea.
The other reason is for weed supression. On my big beds I grow squash, onions, beans for drying, potatoes, and garlic in that order(these crops are intercropped with other things but I won’t go into that).
The squash and the potatoes smother the soil for a full summer growing season and need minimal weeding. The onions, garlic and beans however, let light to the surface of the bed. So the potatoes and squash are split up, time wise, by the weedier crops to help control weeds.

Nick

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