However, there’s another significant reason to practice crop rotation, and that is to increase fertility of the soil. In a time when the food we can grow at home will become ever more critical, we want to make sure we can grow as much as possible in the space we have. Much of the information below is condensed from Eliot Coleman’s The New Organic Gardener. While it is aimed primarily at folks raising food on a larger scale to be sold in farmers markets, the principles can be applied to those of us growing produce in our own backyard.
But before discussing crop rotation, we need to review the various families—what crops belong to the same family and thus shouldn’t be planted after each other because they are too closely related. At the same time, sometimes it helps to combine crops based on more general gardening categories, i.e., lettuce and spinach are in totally different families, but they are both grown as salad greens with similar harvest periods.
So here are the primary crop groups:
- Root crops
- Beet
- Carrot
- Onion
- Potato
- Radish
- Legumes
- Bean
- Pea
- Vine crops
- Cucumber
- Squash
- Grain crops
- Corn
- Fruit Crops
- Pepper
- Tomato
- Brassica crops
- Broccoli
- Brussels sprouts
- Cabbage
- Cauliflower
- Greens
- Celery
- Chard
- Lettuce
- Kale
- Spinach
And I hate to break it to you, but in order to practice crop rotation effectively, you are also going to have to keep some records—what you planted where each year. It’s a drag, I know. But unless you have a master memory, you aren’t going to remember what was planted where last year. It all begins to blend together.
In order to increase soil fertility by crop rotation, the crops need to be rotated in a certain order. The following is a ten-year rotation plan proposed by Eliot Coleman for the most commonly grown vegetables.
Tomatoes and peppers are some of the most commonly planted vegetables, so we begin with these.
Squash and melons do well after tomatoes and are considered a generally beneficial preceding crop. If you can get in a green manure (like sweet clover), it will be well-prepared for the broccoli to follow.
Broccoli and cauliflower are mainly here between the squash and the peas to separate them from the cabbage that grows in the same area with the beans.
Peas are an excellent crop to grow before corn.
Corn is a heavy feeder and benefits greatly from manure.
Potatoes yield best after corn and need to be separated from the tomatoes and peppers.
Greens (lettuce, spinach, etc.) end up here by default.
Carrots and onions are often detrimental to soil fertility—they’re heavy feeders. Onions are a good crop to grow before cabbage
Beans and cabbage are another good choice to grow before corn.
Corn also follows cabbage because corn is a vegetable least affected by a preceding detrimental crop (which cabbage is considered to be).
And this takes us back to the beginning, the tomatoes and peppers.
Of course, we don’t necessarily grow all these vegetables. We might need more space for those that store well or others that we preserve in quantity. My family loves peas and beans, but only when they are fresh, so we grow less of those vegetables. On the other hand, we love spaghetti and can’t seem to get enough salsa, so we grow a lot more tomatoes and peppers. (Or we try. Those @#$% deer apparently love peppers.) It’s most important to do what works for your family and your particular needs. Practicing crop rotation may improve your yields in a time when we need every advantage we can get.
For further information:
Eliot Coleman, The New Organic Grower, 1989, 60-62.
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