Basic Rules Of Crop Rotation

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

Long-standing gardeners are well aware that the longer you grow the same crop in one place, the worse the harvest becomes. The reason for this phenomenon is that vegetables through the soil transmit their diseases to subsequent generations, deplete the soil, and change its mechanical structure. What to do? Do not move from place to place in order to reap the glorious fruits of your labor and collect enviable harvests. Of course not - you need to send your green pets on the journey

How to rotate the beds?

To avoid the adverse consequences of placing the same crops in the garden, they need to rotate, and more specifically, alternate different types of vegetables in the beds. But they do it not chaotically, but in a systematic, well-thought-out order.

To do this, adhere to the following basic rules of crop rotation:

• To prevent vegetables from transmitting their characteristic diseases, species resistant to them should be placed in this place after crops affected by a certain infection. For example, when a keel was seen on a cabbage, in no case are other crucifers planted here. Common diseases for cabbage, turnips, radish are both vascular bacteriosis and downy mildew. Accordingly, after tomatoes, defenseless against late blight, other nightshades are not grown.

• It is important to consider the depth of the measles system in green pets. If vegetables with shallow roots were collected from the beds last season, you need to plan for the future to place plants with a deep root system here.

• While some plants enrich the soil with the secretions of their roots, the result of the vital activity of others will be poison for future recipients. This point also needs to be taken into account in the crop rotation. The same applies to plants, the cultivation of which creates favorable conditions for the emergence of weeds. The next culture should suppress their development.

The order of placement of crops after applying manure to the beds

When reclaiming the soil, one must not forget that some varieties of vegetables draw out certain nutrients more from the soil. And fertilizers must be applied in such a way as to make up for this deficiency, to prevent depletion of the land.

To a greater extent, plants need nitrogen and potassium during growth. And manure copes well with the lack of these elements. But not every crop will grow well with fresh organic fertilizer.

With regard to the placement of crops after filling the land with organic matter, there is also a certain system and procedure:

• manure is applied in autumn to vegetable beds approximately once every three years - depending on the type of soil and soil depletion;

• in the first year after fertilization, you can plant cucumbers, celery, leeks;

• in the second year, it is recommended to place all varieties of cabbage, parsley, onions, low-growing varieties of tomatoes;

• crops of the third stage - vigorous tomatoes and early potatoes, legumes, carrots, beets.

You can find recommendations to plant onions in the first year after the introduction of manure. With this planting, fertilizer stimulates strong leaf growth, but prolonged ripening of bulbs and poor keeping quality in winter. In this case, you need to place the previous culture under the onion.

On poor soils, cabbage is planted in the first year after fertilization - it needs a lot of nutrients. The same is done with medium-sized tomatoes, parsley. In the second year, carrots and beets, asparagus beans, early potatoes are placed here. In the third year, the site is occupied by vigorous tomatoes and legumes.