Crop rotation is made up of the cycle of different types of crops on the same land during several seasons. Like this you plant various vegetables one after another on one same ground to improve the ground, use better the nutrients in the ground and lower the pressure of pests and weeds. That method hampers the heavy use of certain nutrients of the crops and reduce the risk of resistant insects and weeds
The notion is genuinely simple. Every year you plant crops in different places. By means of that, if you do not repeat the same vegetables always on the same place, you can escape many pests and diseases.
How to Rotate Crops in Your Garden
Rotate crops suspend the lifecycles of pathogens, insects and nematodes, because you remove their host. Between the common diseases that rotation helps to inhibit are clubroot in brassicas and white rot in bulbs.
Every crop extracts from the soil and leaves certain nutrients for its growth. If you repeatedly plant the same, it exhausts always the same elements. When you cultivate one species often on the same soil, the yields decline slowly, even if you add chemical fertilizers.
Here happen nutrient imbalance.
Most gardeners that use crop rotation agree about the four basic groups: beans, greens, roots and fruits. Vegetables you can sort in legumes, roots, fruit-bearers and those that you cultivate because of leaves or flowers. The next crop should come from another family than the prior.
Legumes you follow by means of non-legumes and vice versa. Heavy crops you follow by means of restoring crops.
For instance: beans, later tomatoes, later brassicas, later bulbs. Beans put nitrogen in the ground. Tomatoes benefit of the healthy soil.
Brassicas rest the ground against tomato pathogens. Bulbs do not require a lot of nutrients, so they go after brassicas. To the brassica family belongs cauliflower, radishes, turnips, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi and broccoli.
Some vegetables no easily spread soil born diseases, so they no necessarily require rotation. Beetroots and spinach are relatively easy and can come after almost everything. During planning of rotation, a garden log or charts are useful to recall where you planted every year.
Always when you plant, you add compost and other natural materials. It is good to leave plots rest occasionally. Cover crops operate well as nitrogen fixers during the winter.
Even in one bed you can apply the rotary principle.