Crop rotation?

[Rosalind]

How do you guys rotate your annual crops? I am trying to come up with a decent rotation system, and my Rodale's Encyclopedia gives a few options, none of which seem to be quite what I am looking for. I keep ending up with two heavy feeders in a row, which is no good.

I'm growing:

Legumes, always grow well for me when critters are kept at bay
Maize, which doesn't
Solanaceae, which do OK most of the time
Alliaceae, garlic comes up well but onions are iffy. I'll see how they overwinter.
Curcurbits, which do well only in certain beds, so there's a limit to how much rotation I can do there.
Brassicas, which all get eaten by the critters. I'm going to try them in the cold frame over winter.

I've been interplanting the Chenopodiaceae and Apiaceae, should I rotate them through instead? I don't get good yields at all interplanted, but I'm not sure I've got the soil right on those beds either.

Most books and extension rotation lists only have, like, 2/3 of what I grow. They don't count on very diverse cropping I suppose.

I need to keep as many things up on a real trellis as possible. Interplanting maize and beans isn't going to work in this case--tried that, corn fell over under the weight of a zillion beanstalks, no popcorn for me.

Other suggestions? My strawberries are well away from the raspberries, which are well away from the roses. I'm not worried about nearby perennials.

 

[katz]

In the Fall if I am not growing a fall garden , I till the soil and then plant a cover crop of annual Rye,Oats,Clover or other green and then let the soil rest till Spring , then in early spring till and wait a couple of weeks and plant my usual veggies. I do keep a sheet on where stuff was planted the year before and try planting stuff in other areas but it's hard with a trellis and also planting so the short plants get plenty of sun when you have a small garden .

 

[SewingDiva]

Simple Gifts Farm has a terrific e-book for $9.95 from that covers crop rotation, intercropping and succession plating for intensive gardening. It has an easy to use crop rotation schedule, as well as lots if information about intercropping and succession platning. There is even a formula to modify the plant spacing recommended by the seed companies in order and you'll still get good yields in *much* less space. The author has stuided cultivation methods in Asia, where farmers over the centuries have developed methods for getting maximum yeilds from small garden spaces. He had take those methods and adapted them for western tastes in terms of plant varieties.

We have a potager style garden instead of the tradtional straight row cultivation method and this book has been just the ticket.

It's agreat book, very informative and I highly recommend it!

Phyllis

 

[me&thegals]

I use the crop rotation 3-year plan (4 garden plots) in Organic Gardening by Geoff Hamilton. It's working well for me, although even that doesn't seem to keep the squash bug population down enough...

 

[patandchickens]

I have no real suggestions to offer, but I sure do sympathize with the problem. The difficulty of being really 'pure' about crop rotation is that it doesn't allow YOU to decide how much of what to plant. Like, if you want to plant 3/4 of your plot in tomatoes and peppers and eggplants every year, you just CAN'T rotate things properly.

My feeling is that you just have to do what you can, when 'real, proper' rotation isn't possible. Other measures, like keeping the soil as healthy and productive as possible, become proportionately more important, plus of course whatever degree of rotation you can achieve (esp. for whatever spp have the most trouble with diseases in your particular garden)

Good luck,

Pat

 

[meriruka1]

I had a small garden for years, I just added lots of compost to the soil to rejuvenate it, dug in spent marigold plants to repel nematodes and used a homemade insecticide (2 crushed cloves garlic, 1 tbsp dishsoap, 1 cup milk and an egg in a gallon of water and sprayed on the plants) and just shifted the heavy feeders around.

 

[Rosalind]

Thanks for the suggestions. DH pointed out that if I had any mercy on his paycheck, I would use a significant number of garden beds for chicken food cultivation. I spent much of the weekend researching the various types of grains, legumes & greens that constitute a healthy chicken diet, so now I just have to figure out if "chicken mix" is a heavy feeder or a light feeder:

Chicken mix
Amaranth
Quinoa
Oats
Triticale
Kale
Clover
Beetberry
Green lentils

please oh please, someone say "light feeder"