When you’re new to gardening, it can be a relief to see your plants thrive and produce a great harvest. Once you’ve found the right blend of soil and sun exposure, you can be reluctant to tamper with a good thing. You’ll have to be brave and embrace the idea of moving your crops around or you may regret it as the years pass.
For example, if you plant broccoli in the same patch, season after season, all the broccoli-loving pests are going to learn about it. The soil will be filled with eggs and cocoons from all the various bugs that like eating broccoli. They thrive on your plants each year, and then the cycle continues. The same situation goes for the mix of bacteria, molds and fungi that go unseen in the soil. The deck is stacked against you and your poor plants after a few seasons. This is why you rotate.
There are lots of different approaches, but the simplest is a 4-year plan. Each patch of your garden should have its occupants shift through 4 stages, one each year:
1. Leafy - spinach, kale, chard, lettuce
2. Fruit - literal fruits, as well as pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes
3. Legumes - beans, peas
4. Roots - carrots, beets, turnips, onions
The specific order isn’t important, just that you keep things moving from one type of plant to the next. Allowing for at least 2 years before bringing the same kind of plant back into any one spot is going to help reduce your pest load, but 4 years is ideal if you can manage it.
A rotation plan can be helpful as long as you aren’t spoiling other good conditions to make it work. Just do your best to make the rotation principle work for your garden area.
