Back when I started my garden I found a 6 year crop rotation system. It uses 6 beds of the same size and every year the the crop is moved to the next bed. The beds are organized as
1.Compost/rebuild/cover crop
2.nightshades including potatoes
3.root vegetables
4.legumes
5.corn/squash/melons
6.leaf vegetables and cole crops.
Each year the the crop moves to the next bed in the list so whatever was in bed 1 would be planted in bed 2 the next year and so on.
While this seems to be a good system and is easy to follow I'm wondering what everyone’s opinion is on it? Considering my poor soil and the fact that it seems to keep degrading I'm wondering if I should keep using this system or find something else?
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redneck647
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rainbowgardener
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nightshades, e.g. potatoes and tomatoes don't do well together, or in succession. They are subject to a lot of the same diseases and pests.
Personally, I like to mix things up in my beds a lot more. Basil is great to plant with tomatoes. Carrots and tomatoes do well together and it is very easy to plant a row of carrots down an edge of the bed and plant the tomatoes behind them later. I edge most of my beds with onions and garlic, which take up little room and help keep pests away. Flowers in or around the garden beds help attract beneficial insects and pollinators.
If your soil is degrading, that has little or nothing to do with what your rotation is. It just means you are not replenishing it enough. Everything you grow takes nutrients out of the soil (even the legumes add some Nitrogen, but take out other things). You need to keep adding in lots of compost, and other organic materials. Do you keep your beds mulched? A good layer of mulch helps keep the soil from eroding and from drying out and giving up nutrients. And the mulch (organic materials) breaks down over time to feed the soil. I like to do a mix of "green" and "brown" (high N and high C) mulch, just like you would in your compost pile. This could be grass clippings and fall leaves, pulled weeds and straw, etc. They break down better together than separately, and they break down into a complete plant food with all essential nutrients.
Personally, I like to mix things up in my beds a lot more. Basil is great to plant with tomatoes. Carrots and tomatoes do well together and it is very easy to plant a row of carrots down an edge of the bed and plant the tomatoes behind them later. I edge most of my beds with onions and garlic, which take up little room and help keep pests away. Flowers in or around the garden beds help attract beneficial insects and pollinators.
If your soil is degrading, that has little or nothing to do with what your rotation is. It just means you are not replenishing it enough. Everything you grow takes nutrients out of the soil (even the legumes add some Nitrogen, but take out other things). You need to keep adding in lots of compost, and other organic materials. Do you keep your beds mulched? A good layer of mulch helps keep the soil from eroding and from drying out and giving up nutrients. And the mulch (organic materials) breaks down over time to feed the soil. I like to do a mix of "green" and "brown" (high N and high C) mulch, just like you would in your compost pile. This could be grass clippings and fall leaves, pulled weeds and straw, etc. They break down better together than separately, and they break down into a complete plant food with all essential nutrients.
Crop rotation is actually what is recommmended. While it is true that companions can be planted together, one of the other purposes of crop rotation is to rest the soil and plant a successor crop that will use different nutrients and hopefully have different pests from the previous crop which minimizes pest damage.
You do have to add organics all of the time and it should be organic material from a variety of sources. It takes about three years of contantly adding organics and building up the soil community to get a very productive garden organically. However, if you plant a lot of heavy feeders and less light feeders like legumes and herbs then the garden will need more supplementation and may take longer since more nutrients are removed than going in. Besides compost you also need to be adding nutrients in the form of composted manures, bone meal, blood meal, kelp meal, fish emulsion, greensand, etc to provide organic nutrients. Organic nutrients are not readily available. Some may take up to 2 years to fully become available but eventually it will happen. If you want to garden organically, organic inputs will need to be added all the time. A soil test is a good way to get advice on how much and what materials you need to add to get you to a balanced soil and a productive garden. You will need to ask for organic recommendations otherwise the advice will be for synthetic fertilyzer.
You do have to add organics all of the time and it should be organic material from a variety of sources. It takes about three years of contantly adding organics and building up the soil community to get a very productive garden organically. However, if you plant a lot of heavy feeders and less light feeders like legumes and herbs then the garden will need more supplementation and may take longer since more nutrients are removed than going in. Besides compost you also need to be adding nutrients in the form of composted manures, bone meal, blood meal, kelp meal, fish emulsion, greensand, etc to provide organic nutrients. Organic nutrients are not readily available. Some may take up to 2 years to fully become available but eventually it will happen. If you want to garden organically, organic inputs will need to be added all the time. A soil test is a good way to get advice on how much and what materials you need to add to get you to a balanced soil and a productive garden. You will need to ask for organic recommendations otherwise the advice will be for synthetic fertilyzer.
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Taiji
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The way you describe it, it sounds like any given bed is only being rebuilt once every 6 years which doesn't seem like very much.
I've taken to planting a winter cover crop on every bed every year. (with a few exceptions where I might have some kale, or chard or onions overwintering) As soon as the corn comes out, or the squash and tomatoes are done at the first heavy frost, in goes a rye or some kind of clover. If there's time between your harvest and really cold weather that might be an option. (in addition of course, to the things the others have mentioned)
I've taken to planting a winter cover crop on every bed every year. (with a few exceptions where I might have some kale, or chard or onions overwintering) As soon as the corn comes out, or the squash and tomatoes are done at the first heavy frost, in goes a rye or some kind of clover. If there's time between your harvest and really cold weather that might be an option. (in addition of course, to the things the others have mentioned)
Crop rotation is overrated and difficult in a home garden.
First of all, with a few exceptions, most vegetable diseases do not survive a typical winter (I.e. zone 6) in the soil -- or are not soil borne at all. Most vegetable diseases that can overwinter do it on weeds. Good weed control is very important! The really nasty soil borne diseases that'll survive an average winter are allium diseases, or verticillium, or fusarium in southern climates. And if you didn't have any then it isn't an issue. They don't come into existence by repeatedly growing crops in the same place. In fact, they are kept at bay by growing susceptible crops in uninfected soil. If you do have these, they survive for many many years (some 10+ years) so rotation is of minimal benefit.
Second of all, plants all need the same nutrients. They all have the same basic biology. Sure, there are heavy feeders and not heavy feeders, and it is a good idea not to continually plant heavy feeders in the same spot, but they are all using the same nutrients. So rotation of crop types to preserve nutrients is of very limited value.
Third, unless you are sterilizing your equipment between beds, it is not a true crop rotation. You are spreading everything around.
Fourth, most pests are ubiquitous, and you aren't going to protect your plants from overwintering pests by moving them 10 feet to the next bed. If that is all it took the pests would be long extinct!
Finally, different plants have different needs (I.e. sun requirements), and as most home gardens vary a lot in sun exposure, it is very important to plant the right plants in the right place.
Crop rotation is really something that is part of farming large fields, not home gardens. The attempt to adapt it to home gardens is pretty tenuous.
First of all, with a few exceptions, most vegetable diseases do not survive a typical winter (I.e. zone 6) in the soil -- or are not soil borne at all. Most vegetable diseases that can overwinter do it on weeds. Good weed control is very important! The really nasty soil borne diseases that'll survive an average winter are allium diseases, or verticillium, or fusarium in southern climates. And if you didn't have any then it isn't an issue. They don't come into existence by repeatedly growing crops in the same place. In fact, they are kept at bay by growing susceptible crops in uninfected soil. If you do have these, they survive for many many years (some 10+ years) so rotation is of minimal benefit.
Second of all, plants all need the same nutrients. They all have the same basic biology. Sure, there are heavy feeders and not heavy feeders, and it is a good idea not to continually plant heavy feeders in the same spot, but they are all using the same nutrients. So rotation of crop types to preserve nutrients is of very limited value.
Third, unless you are sterilizing your equipment between beds, it is not a true crop rotation. You are spreading everything around.
Fourth, most pests are ubiquitous, and you aren't going to protect your plants from overwintering pests by moving them 10 feet to the next bed. If that is all it took the pests would be long extinct!
Finally, different plants have different needs (I.e. sun requirements), and as most home gardens vary a lot in sun exposure, it is very important to plant the right plants in the right place.
Crop rotation is really something that is part of farming large fields, not home gardens. The attempt to adapt it to home gardens is pretty tenuous.
I don't have a winter to rest the beds so I do a kind of rotation. I do give the corn extra nitrogen because it is a heavy feeder in summer but I will follow the corn with Asian greens and brassica juncea which are nutrient scavengers that scavenge the extra nitrogen fertilizer and brassica juncea spp are good for nematode suppression. Nematodes are very common here. I will sometimes rotate the tomatoes with beans or peas. I actually replace the potting soil every year with a new mix but the old soil does go back into the garden.
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rainbowgardener
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redneck647
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Thanks.
And yes I know my problems are more then just one thing. I'm kinda taking it piece by piece to figure out what I need to do.
Right now my garden is mostly clay. I started composting 2 years ago and both years most of the compost went to the rebuild plot. I also add compost into the root vegetable bed after harvesting and did the same where the potatoes grew. The rest of the nightshade bed had some compost added while transplanting.
After that the remaining compost was added to the other beds but it probably wasn't enough to make much difference. probably less then a gallon per square foot.
So are you guys saying crop rotation isn't really worth it in the garden? Would I be better off using the space for what I went to grow instead of making everything fit into 6 same sized sections?
And yes I know my problems are more then just one thing. I'm kinda taking it piece by piece to figure out what I need to do.
Right now my garden is mostly clay. I started composting 2 years ago and both years most of the compost went to the rebuild plot. I also add compost into the root vegetable bed after harvesting and did the same where the potatoes grew. The rest of the nightshade bed had some compost added while transplanting.
After that the remaining compost was added to the other beds but it probably wasn't enough to make much difference. probably less then a gallon per square foot.
So are you guys saying crop rotation isn't really worth it in the garden? Would I be better off using the space for what I went to grow instead of making everything fit into 6 same sized sections?
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applestar
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I do rotation of sorts -- don't know if it is within definition as such. To my way of thinking, rotation is also about growing DEEPLY rooted crops like corn and ground hugging suppressors like cucurbits in turns, not just diseases and pests. My view is that pests may overwinter in the ground, but so do Garden Patrol and soil foodweb organisms. Earthworms like corn root systems the best. By moving them around every year, you nurture the soil better.
The way I went about it was to first identify sun exposure for each of the various beds -- mine are not identical since they "grew" over the years as I expanded growing areas. Also water retention and early spring thaw/ground warmup.
The sunniest beds are used to plant three main crop groups in turn -- tomatoes, squashes/melons, and corn.
The earliest to warm up beds are used to plant legumes before the main crops for the summer season.
- Corn bed which is first to be planted are used to grow the earliest maturing snap peas in alternating rows as earlier succession crop and some pole and bush beans as companions (corn succession/companions hinge on being able to hill the corn after harvesting or before planting).
- I tried lettuce, arugula, and onions as earlier succession to tomatoes last year and that seemed to have worked. I'm also liking adzuki or bush beans and basil as companions for tomatoes.
- Somewhat later maturing snow peas, shell peas and fava beans are good early successors to cucurbits. Sowing summer squash at the edge worked out in the garlic/onion bed last year since by the time squash started to take over, the alliums were harvested.
Garlic gets rotated into beds that are not completely in house and surrounding tree shadows during the fall-winter-spring months.
Potatoes are rotated in to annex beds of the main crop beds or to smaller sunny beds on the other side of the house with 2nd variety corn. Peppers and cucumbers can manage with a little less sun. Least sunny beds can be used for leafy greens, bush beans, etc. The smaller beds are also used with insect barrier covers for brassicas in the early spring planting then succession planted with something else later.
Since the beds are not equal in size, some years I can grow more of one of the main crops than others. In 2017, the biggest bed rotation is corn, and I'm going to have fun with that. But squash bed is smallest. I did expand last year and will have a separate small bed for melons.
I've been experimenting with how to work sweet potatoes into the rotations and successions. Early spring-planted "irish" potatoes and summer planted sweet potatoes are significant in rotation since I don't till. The beds planted with these potatoes that year are thoroughly dug up at harvest.
The way I went about it was to first identify sun exposure for each of the various beds -- mine are not identical since they "grew" over the years as I expanded growing areas. Also water retention and early spring thaw/ground warmup.
The sunniest beds are used to plant three main crop groups in turn -- tomatoes, squashes/melons, and corn.
The earliest to warm up beds are used to plant legumes before the main crops for the summer season.
- Corn bed which is first to be planted are used to grow the earliest maturing snap peas in alternating rows as earlier succession crop and some pole and bush beans as companions (corn succession/companions hinge on being able to hill the corn after harvesting or before planting).
- I tried lettuce, arugula, and onions as earlier succession to tomatoes last year and that seemed to have worked. I'm also liking adzuki or bush beans and basil as companions for tomatoes.
- Somewhat later maturing snow peas, shell peas and fava beans are good early successors to cucurbits. Sowing summer squash at the edge worked out in the garlic/onion bed last year since by the time squash started to take over, the alliums were harvested.
Garlic gets rotated into beds that are not completely in house and surrounding tree shadows during the fall-winter-spring months.
Potatoes are rotated in to annex beds of the main crop beds or to smaller sunny beds on the other side of the house with 2nd variety corn. Peppers and cucumbers can manage with a little less sun. Least sunny beds can be used for leafy greens, bush beans, etc. The smaller beds are also used with insect barrier covers for brassicas in the early spring planting then succession planted with something else later.
Since the beds are not equal in size, some years I can grow more of one of the main crops than others. In 2017, the biggest bed rotation is corn, and I'm going to have fun with that. But squash bed is smallest. I did expand last year and will have a separate small bed for melons.
I've been experimenting with how to work sweet potatoes into the rotations and successions. Early spring-planted "irish" potatoes and summer planted sweet potatoes are significant in rotation since I don't till. The beds planted with these potatoes that year are thoroughly dug up at harvest.
No matter the size, I think rotation of some kind is better than none at all. Your schedule looks like it should be OK. I would not/could not like having a bed out of production for an entire season. If this were my situation and my soil was on the clay side, I would continuously amend the beds with organics every year. I would till in grass clippings, straw, composted manure and any other organic every spring and fall.
You may consider a soil test to see what your soil needs or does not need. I do mine every third year just to be sure. You could plant a cover crop in the fall and till it in in the spring. Mulching is a good idea. Mine is newspaper and straw and it gets incorporated every fall and new mulch applied at planting time.
You may consider a soil test to see what your soil needs or does not need. I do mine every third year just to be sure. You could plant a cover crop in the fall and till it in in the spring. Mulching is a good idea. Mine is newspaper and straw and it gets incorporated every fall and new mulch applied at planting time.
Last edited by PaulF on Wed Jan 04, 2017 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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jal_ut
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I garden on the land out in the backyard that was left there by the Creator. Yes it is heavy in clay. Clay is not all that bad as long as you remember to never work it when too damp. If you do it will form hard clods that take all season to break down. I am not one to use cover crops, but till in the fall, then when the leaves come down scatter them on the garden. Come Spring, just go plant. I am not one to have a compost heap, but during the growing season as organic matter becomes available I just spread it between the corn rows as a mulch. I know, growing in "Beds" may be a little different, but the same principles apply.
About rotation: Here the farmers grow alfalfa which is a legume then after a few years, they will plow it up and plant wheat. Good practice. The alfalfa tends to enrich the soil with nitrogen. The grains take it away. Also as previously noted diseases and pests may be avoided.
In my own garden its corn on this side this year and over there next year. The rest of the stuff can go where it will. I don't worry much about it, but by moving the corn which takes up a large piece of the plot, everything gets moved.
OH, questions: Where did you get your soil and what is it?
If something that came in a bag, it is not likely soil at all but probably a mix of peat and cardboard.
About rotation: Here the farmers grow alfalfa which is a legume then after a few years, they will plow it up and plant wheat. Good practice. The alfalfa tends to enrich the soil with nitrogen. The grains take it away. Also as previously noted diseases and pests may be avoided.
In my own garden its corn on this side this year and over there next year. The rest of the stuff can go where it will. I don't worry much about it, but by moving the corn which takes up a large piece of the plot, everything gets moved.
OH, questions: Where did you get your soil and what is it?
If something that came in a bag, it is not likely soil at all but probably a mix of peat and cardboard.
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redneck647
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First off sorry if I confused you.
“Bed” is just a general term I'm using. Everything’s just panted tn the ground and each bed has stone placed around it. The soil is just what was there originally. At one point many many years ago it was supposedly an orchard. Then a field and now the garden. However when I started it I did something kinda dumb and cut the sod off and removed it. I know now that it wasn't the best idea.
I'm hoping to have a soil test done this spring.
Fall cover crops are hard because “usually” we get nasty winters. Not that you could tell this year but. Lol.
I do try to plant radishes in the fall and use them as a cover crop. They’re fast enough to turn the bed green before the snow hits and they help with the clay too. and they seem to break down before its time to plant.
“Bed” is just a general term I'm using. Everything’s just panted tn the ground and each bed has stone placed around it. The soil is just what was there originally. At one point many many years ago it was supposedly an orchard. Then a field and now the garden. However when I started it I did something kinda dumb and cut the sod off and removed it. I know now that it wasn't the best idea.
I'm hoping to have a soil test done this spring.
Fall cover crops are hard because “usually” we get nasty winters. Not that you could tell this year but. Lol.
I do try to plant radishes in the fall and use them as a cover crop. They’re fast enough to turn the bed green before the snow hits and they help with the clay too. and they seem to break down before its time to plant.