Vegetable Gardening

Roation for Vegetable Gardening

Many people get lost when it comes to crop rotation, or just plain have no idea why they need to go through this effort.  Crop rotation is important as it discourages the buildup of pests and diseases that occur when planting the same plants are in a same location year after year.  Rotating the vegetable plants helps prevent diseases and predators from becoming established.

Certain vegetable plants are required to be rotated more often than others.  Legumes enrich the soil by fixing nitrogen levels.  Nitrogen is needed by brassicas and other leafy vegetables.  Root vegetable plants improve the soil for legumes.  Root vegetable plants generally do best in a location that had manure applied in the previous season.  Soil that is too rich may hinder root vegetables under the ground producing a leaf in place of a root.

The easiest way to keep track of crop rotation is to divide your vegetable garden into three areas.  The brassicas can be grown in bed A , root vegetables can be grown in bed B, and legumes can be grown into bed C.  The next year move legumes to bed A, brassicas to bed B and roots to bed C.  This insures that the bed containing root vegetables can be manure at the end of the season which makes it  ready for brassicas, and the root vegetables have nitrogen fixed into the soil from the legumes of the previous year.

Tags: crop rotation, garden soil, garden trellis, growing vegetables, Planting Vegetables, Raised bed gardening, vegetable garden design, vegetable gardening