Crop rotation is the method of shifting which crops are grown through which beds in your backyard from yr to yr. This course of has been used for 1000’s of years to advertise soil well being and enhance crop yields. The traditional Romans and Mayans used crop rotations to help their civilizations with out pesticides and with only a few nutrient inputs. Even with immediately’s expertise, utilizing a crop rotation in your backyard is useful to your soil, your crops, and your pocketbook.
Why Rotate your Crops?
The first cause gardeners and farmers rotate their crops is to stability nutrient depletion within the soil. Completely different crops have distinctive nutrient necessities, so rising the identical crops in the identical place yr after yr will finally deplete the vitamins erratically and require an increasing number of costly fertilizer inputs. One other vital advantage of rotating crops is disrupting pests and ailments. Many pests and plant ailments overwinter within the soil and in plant matter simply beneath their typical host vegetation. When the rising season comes again round, they emerge and start searching for out an acceptable host. If in case you have an unsuitable crop rising the place they emerged it reduces the possibilities of them discovering their goal crop in your backyard.
Rotating by Plant Household
As talked about above, most crops use a singular proportion of various vitamins within the soil which implies that planting them in the identical place for a few years can deplete the vitamins that they use most closely. Typically, vegetation in the identical plant household have comparable dietary habits. The identical is true for pests and ailments which may goal a number of species in the identical plant household. For each of those causes, most gardeners and farmers base their crop rotation round households of vegetation. Listed below are a few of the most typical plant households utilized in North American gardens and the crops they comprise:
Solanaceae: Tomatoes, Peppers, Potatoes, Tomatillos, Eggplant
Fabaceae: Beans, Peas, Peanuts
Cucurbitaceae: Cucumbers, Squash, Pumpkin, Melons
Brassicaceae: Cabbage, Kale, Broccoli, Collards, Radishes, Turnips, Mustard Greens, Arugula
Poaceae: Corn, Wheat, Rice, Oats
Apiaceae: Carrots, Parsnips, Parsley
Amaranthaceae: Beets, Swiss Chard, Spinach, Quinoa
Amaryllidaceae: Onions, Garlic, Leeks
For example how a crop rotation can scale back pest stress in your backyard, I’ll use cabbage pests for instance. Let’s say you grew cabbage in a specific backyard mattress one yr after which grew kale in that very same mattress the subsequent yr. The cabbage pests and ailments that overwintered within the soil would emerge within the spring to seek out kale, which is in the identical household as cabbage, making it an acceptable host for his or her larvae. As an alternative, when you planted peppers—that are in a distinct plant household—the lifecycle of these pests and ailments could be interrupted, and they might both die off or go away your backyard.
As for crop rotation balancing nutrient depletion, let’s use the instance of corn and beans. Corn is called a heavy nitrogen feeder. It makes use of tons of obtainable nitrogen within the soil to gas its leafy progress and produce good large ears. For those who develop corn in the identical plot yr after yr with out amending the soil, it’ll finally deplete the nitrogen leaving you with anemic, ravenous vegetation and tiny ears of corn.
However, when you rotate your corn patch with a legume like beans and peas, you possibly can scale back the depletion of nitrogen. Legumes really produce nitrogen of their roots by means of a relationship with nitrogen-fixing micro organism, so rising them and leaving the spent vegetation to compost in your backyard beds really replaces a few of the out there nitrogen. This is the reason large-scale business corn farms will typically rotate soybeans each few years the place they usually develop corn.
When to Rotate?
Some growers, particularly small farmers, suggest rotating crops yearly. As an illustration, a discipline through which carrots have been grown one yr won’t comprise carrots once more for 3 or 4 years till the rotation comes again round to that discipline.
In different instances, crop rotation is barely used when pest and illness issues construct up in a single discipline as a way to interrupt their lifecycle. To maintain observe of what was planted the place in earlier years, it’s useful to attract a map of your backyard and be aware which crops have been grown in what mattress every year. How typically you rotate your crops is your private choice, however when you discover that your backyard is suffering from pests and illness yr after yr, you probably must implement a extra frequent and strict crop rotation.
How Does this Jive with Companion Planting?
With all this discuss of rotating by plant household and avoiding rising the identical crops yr after yr, you is likely to be questioning how precisely this works with companion plantings like a Three Sisters Backyard, which incorporates vegetation from three completely different households. As a result of the aim of many companion plantings is to cut back the affect on the soil and confuse pests, it’d really feel like overkill to additionally rotate them, however the compounding impact of rising a polyculture and rotating your crops solely additional confuses pests and preserves your soil that rather more.
Don’t get me unsuitable—crop rotation isn’t a magic bullet. You’ll nonetheless must fertilize your backyard and handle pests and ailments, however as illustrated above, crop rotation reduces the severity of the pests in your backyard and reduces the quantity of fertilizer wanted for wholesome, productive crops.
