Crop Rotation

Now we are finally removing he last of the late-ripening veggies, it’s a good time to get your head around the crop rotation system so that you can be sure of a great crop of winter and spring veggies.

Check out the excellent SGA info on spinning sround your crops.

Preparing a vegetable bed for the next crop.

It’s obvious that different vegetables require different soil conditions. So when rotating the vegetables, the soil needs to be treated to suit the new vegetable. For example tomatoes like their soil to be acidic whereas onions prefer it more alkaline. So you need to lime a garden bed where you grew tomatoes before planting your onions.  Then after harvesting onions you plant beans and peas (legumes) because they also love sweet soil. Legumes are fantastic because they capture nitrogen from the atmosphere and pump it into the soil, so they can be followed by leaf vegies such as broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower, spinach, bok choy,  lettuces and silver beet. After these guys you can sow the yummy root crops suh as beetroot, carrots and parsnips as they don’t need much manure to flourish.

 Crop Rotation Tips
• Rest your beds for a few days (a week is even better) if adding manures to allow the soil to absorb the goodness
• Put your chooks in the old bed as they will delight in turning over the soil and eating any leftover bugs such as caterpillars
• Use a garden fork to turn over the soil and mix in your compost as this will aerate the soil and you are less likely to damage the worms.