Crop Rotation


As a gardener you need to look at crop rotation. Even though Crop Rotation isn’t essential it can be very beneficial, especially if you are an organic vegetable gardener.

A proper crop rotation can help stop a build-up of pests and diseases. By stopping a build up your vegetables can grow to the strongest and largest they can be.

Some people grow potatoes in the same spot time and time again and this often leads to cyst eelworm making a stranglehold on your potato patch. If the cyst eelworm is in you potato patch you won’t be able to grow potatoes for 7 years before the pest is completely eradicated.

However if crop rotation had been used you would leave a couple of years in between each rotation.

Club root is another bad disease which affects the brassica family because crop rotation isn’t being used. By making sure that you don’t grow brassicas on the same spot time and time again you can prevent club root from damaging your crop.

Read Also : All You Need to Know About Organic Fertilizer

Another reason why many gardener use crop rotation is that some plant groups take more nutrition from the ground then other plants for instance brassicas and lettuce crops. These types of vegetables will often take a lot of nitrogen from the soil so they will deplete the soil from this nutrient.

Other crops such as roots crops: carrots, beetroot or parsnips need much less nitrogen so that makes them a great crop to grow after lettuce crops or brassicas.

Also peas and beans are a good crop to grow as they are able to hold and fix nitrogen in their root system and they leave nitrogen in the soil for other crops.

There are crops that aren’t included in crop rotation – these types of crops are used in a semi-permanent place. These types of vegetable crops include runner beans and Jerusalem artichokes which are often used as a screen. Asparagus is another crop that is sited on a permanent site because they will stay in that area for around 10 years.

If you really can’t do crop rotation then to prevent disease you can take the precaution by adding new clean soil or compost to your garden. This can also help in preventing pests and disease ruining your garden crops.

By crop rotating you will give the soil time to recuperate and you have less chance of pests and diseases taking hold of your vegetable garden.

Often gardeners use a 3 or 4 year rotation plan, so that the crops have plenty of time between them before they need to go to the next patch. You can simplify your crop rotation by growing similar crops together – such as: beans and peas, greens and brassicas, and various root crops.

One easy way to do crop rotation is by having raised beds. If you have various raised beds then you can easily know which crop has been in which raised bed.

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