Competent Rotation Of Cultures

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Rotating crops in the beds is an excellent way to restore soil fertility, effectively use fertilizers and an excellent preventive measure for many diseases and pests. But when using crop rotation, it must be borne in mind that different vegetables can also be affected by the same diseases. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the reaction of different plants to the same organic fertilizer - for some crops they will be good, but for others they will not affect the result of the harvest or even harm. So how do you apply crop rotation wisely?

Tops and roots

Different vegetable crops require their own specific soil preparation:

• Root crops such as carrots, parsnips work better on shallow soil, while deep cultivation of the soil is required for potato tubers, unless it is planned to grow it under straw.

• Due to the peculiarities of the structure, the roots of plants have different depths of immersion in the soil. The root system of the cucumber and the bottom of the bulb are located in the arable layer. And the roots and tails of carrots and beets are placed a little deeper.

• The manure introduced in the fall will not have time to decompose by the beginning of summer - this will have a bad effect on the yield of onions and its keeping quality, but it will benefit later crops: cabbage, pumpkin.

Based on these features of the agricultural technology of various vegetables, a crop rotation plan is drawn up, which allows the most efficient use of nutrients in the soil and the use of fertilizers.

Unfavorable conditions for disease

You also need to take into account the weakness of vegetables for certain diseases. For example, late blight, which is no less known under the speaking name "potato rot", is dangerous for tomatoes. These different crops have other common enemies, so you can plant them on the same site no earlier than two years later.

Late blight

Disease-causing beginnings tend to persist in the soil for years:

• oversporosis or downy mildew, which destroys cucumber plants, lives in the garden for up to three years;

• vascular bacteriosis of cabbage is dangerous for plants with low resistance to it for about five years.

Replacing plants susceptible to viruses and fungi with crops that are not afraid of them will create unfavorable conditions for the existence of these parasites.

Alternating and writing

So that the vegetables do not "conflict", divide the garden into several sectors, where the crops allowed this year will grow. For example:

• one area is allocated for potatoes;

• on the other place cabbage, pumpkin;

• in the third place root crops, tomatoes, onions, legumes are sown.

In the notebook they note which vegetables were grown in the beds this year. Then, just by looking at the entries, you will know the predecessors for the new season. They will be a good foundation for their successors:

• potatoes, tomatoes, onions, peas - cabbage;

• cabbage, pumpkin seeds, legumes - nightshade (tomato, pepper, eggplant);

• cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage - onions and garlic;

• cabbage, peas, tomato - cucumber;

• potatoes, cabbage, greens - carrots;

• pumpkin seeds, legumes, tomatoes - beets and potatoes (except for tomato).

In crowded but not mad

Plants have different sowing time, growing season and fruit ripening. And while the day of sowing some seeds has not yet arrived, other crops can be placed in their place. Where cucumbers are planned to be planted at the end of May, radishes can be sown in mid-spring and an early harvest can be obtained. Before the June planting of cabbage in open ground, you can have time to harvest in this place a harvest of lettuce, radish, dill, planted in early May.

As long as vegetables are growing with a long ripening period, so that there is no empty space, it can be used with the benefit of sowing compacted crops. They will not interfere with each other, and double the crop will be harvested from the same area. Early ripening crops that ripen within a month and a half are sown between rows of crops with a long ripening period (about 3-4 months). So cucumbers and radishes, potatoes and peas coexist favorably.

Repeated sowing will allow you to remove an additional crop after harvesting the main one. For this purpose, after harvesting early potatoes, the area is occupied by peas, radishes, turnips. Following radish, salad, spinach, you can replenish the vitamin reserves of greens by sowing dill. The area vacated after harvesting early cabbage is occupied by frost-resistant radishes and turnips. By the way, radish is such an early ripening crop, the harvest of which can be removed in a season two or three times in a row.