“Houston, we have a problem.”
I KNOW we’re supposed to rotate our vegetable crops in the garden. It’s one of the golden rules of vegetable gardening to help control insect and disease problems. People with small backyard vegetable gardens often have a difficult time rotating crops because their garden space may be too small. This isn’t an issue for our garden; it’s plenty big. My problem is that we didn’t really plant in a systematic way over the last few years. It’s not like we planted randomly but we didn’t group the plants in the right way to make it easy to rotate our crops.
Why is it so important to rotate the crops in your vegetable garden? Crop rotation is one of the simplest ways to reduce the buildup of pests and diseases that affect different groups of plants. In addition, some crops, like beans and peas (the legumes), fix nitrogen during the growing season and add this important nutrient to the soil. Crop rotation takes advantage of these factors and moves groups of plants with similar cultural requirements around the garden in a systematic way.
A simple rotation plan divides the vegetable garden into four sections. Vegetable crops are divided into four groups mostly according to family and planted into each of the four sections.
For this rotation plan, the four plant groups are:
- Tomato family: tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant
- Greens and the mustard family: lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts
- Legumes: beans, peas, lentils, soybeans
- Squash family and Corn: squash, pumpkin, melon, cucumber, and corn
Carrots, beets, onions, and garlic can be planted in any of these sections.
This simple plan rotates the four groups through each section of the garden so that none is replanted into the same section until the fourth year. The squash family always rotates to where the tomato family was growing the previous year, the tomatoes go where greens were, greens go where legumes were, and legumes go where squash and corn were growing. Easy!
I have one problem with this plan – planting tomatoes and potatoes side by side in the garden. One year we had a really bad infestation of potato beetles that ravaged our potato crop. It was so bad that we ended up spraying them (with Sevin I think). For some reason, this didn’t seem to faze them and I was horrified to discover one day after work that they had moved over to my tomatoes!
Even though it was many years ago, I’m sure Andre remembers me coming to him that evening in an absolute panic exclaiming that “all my tomatoes are going to die and who ever thought that potato beetles would attack tomatoes and they are chewing right through the stems!”
Andre laughed at me because I was really worked up about it. “Calm down!” he said. “Take this and spray your tomatoes tonight. They’ll be fine!” I can’t remember what it was but it worked and my tomatoes were saved but I have been reluctant to plant potatoes and tomatoes together ever since. This is probably why we are having trouble figuring out where we should plant everything this year.
It is important to keep in mind that tomatoes should never be planted in the same area where potatoes were planted the year before and vice versa. We DO follow this practice.
Rotating crops in the vegetable garden reduces the need to spray pesticides and fungicides because it doesn’t allow disease organisms to build up in the soil or allow overwintering insects that emerge from the soil in the spring to find their desirable host plants within easy reach. It just makes sense – an inexpensive, environmentally friendly way to have a successful vegetable gardening experience!
Now I’m going back to the drawing board to figure out where we should plant the tomatoes, beans, and cukes this year. The potatoes and onions are already in the ground and the greens are in containers on the deck for easy access at dinnertime and we’ve just started harvesting some delicious spinach for our salads, yum!
Here’s more information on plant groupings for crop rotation.
Until next time – Happy Gardening!
I found your post very interesting. I use The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Edward C. Smith and he talks about this very thing. I have never really followed the rotating plan. I just make sure that I don’t grow the same family in the same bed the next year. I haven’t had a problem but that doesn’t mean that I won’t some time in the future. The only bug issue I have had is with my pole beans and now I am getting Japanese beetles on all my fruit tress. I have tried the organic way of getting rid of them but it just doesn’t work. I’ve had to use the pesticides and fungicides. It is frustrating.
A small vegetable garden in your own backyard can bring you many benefits. Not only will you realize the creative benefits of gardening, you will grow fresh produce for your family and the local food pantry. Gardening can be a family affair with your children acquiring gardening skills that can be passed on to their own children.
[…] my whole diatribe on crop rotation? There are a lot of people with small backyard gardens that don’t have the space to rotate […]