Crop Rotation

I know I am supposed to do this – not replant the tomatoes where they were last year. And, I do it and keep records. Plus I kind of know why – surely I read a better description of why when I first started gardening than I could offer off the top of my head.

So, while trolling through Pinterest, I found this cute little chart “Garden Crop Rotation – A Simple System” and with my new vow to only Pin valid information, I clicked through to find the original source.

I am happy to say the following:

1. Original sourcing did exist
2. It does look simple to follow
3. The reasoning is good
4. I learned something too!

Check it out – it explains much better than I could about the sequencing of the rotations. I am doing it on a three year rotation and have heard of complex plans for 7 years that I never bothered with.

What this plan explains so well is not only do the tomato-loving bugs (and the diseases that befall tomatoes) wake up next spring in bed where they can’t find tomatoes, but the sequence also utilizes soil nutrients as needed by particular plants and/or builds back soil depleted by the previous crops:

• leaf needs nitrogen
• fruit needs phosphorus but not too much nitrogen
• root needs potassium and even less nitrogen than fruit
• legumes resupply nitrogen for the leaf crops that follow

And so on…

It’s too late for me to do this for 2014 but I certainly plan to address it for next year.

Feb 22nd – Garden Planning

Learned how to make a template in Excel to record my garden rotations – the one type of record I have been keeping since I designed Big Garden many years ago. Now, to make the records digital – trying to get away from the smudged papers I have stuffed in with the seeds.