Crop Rotation

Benefits of Rotating Your Crops

Today’s topic discusses the benefits of rotating your crops from year to year in your garden. I will admit I do not put a lot of thought into this nor implement it to much, sometimes with all the information out there it can be overwhelming. What to plant by what, or where, when, how, rotate, spray, pests and on and on. I generally will change the area from year to year within the garden for most things. However I do find it difficult even though I have a very large area, something about figuring out what should go where can be daunting so I”ll just lay out my design by switching the bigger crops around. So my advice, see if it works for you and if it doesn’t do not let this stop you or stress you out at all! Just do it!

In my back garden which receives a few hours of shade each day I plant my shade loving veggies (Grab the chart here). My awesome Purple Podded Pole Bean Trellis will be flipped each year – the hoop itself will be unleashed on one side and flipped to the other side because Beans are amazing at fixing the soil – putting nitrogen back into the soil. Little Garden Fixers they are! In the same garden I will plant broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower and those babies suck the nutrients right out of the soil so by flipping or moving the bean trellis each year the beans will help fix the soil! How cool is that?

Watch the video to see how I set up the trellis and talk about nitrogen fixing beans!

In my front garden I will simply switch around the big crops because I plant in 100 foot rows. So maybe on the East side the Tomatoes will grow one year then the next they’ll switch to the West side of the garden.

One large benefit of crop rotation is breaking the cycle of pests. Typically those pesty little things hatch from the soil in the spring and if the bug that really loves broccoli doesn’t find broccoli that year they’ll die off. This can include diseases in the soil as well.