WHAT

IS

CROP ROTATION?

Crop Rotation means following a conscious planting plan to avoid planting the same kind of crop in the same spot of garden soil year-upon-year. But I always plant my tomatoes in that spot! newcomers to our garden classes often declare. Under a system of crop rotation you might plant those tomatoes in a bed near your garden shed in year 1, and in a bed near your mailbox in year 2. In years 3 and 4 the tomatoes would be planted in other growing beds on your property. Only in year 5 would the tomatoes return to the bed near your garden shed. There are several reasons why you rotate crops. Primarily: plant diseases and pests, and soil nutrition (mostly nitrogen)

quite depleted. By contrast, members of the legume family, like peas and beans, help replenish the soil. They have the ability to work with beneficial soil bacteria to fix nitrogen to capture it from the air and lock it into the soil for other plants to use. In a simple crop rotation, you follow a planting of heavy-user squashes or broccolis with peas and beans (legumes).

PREVENT

PLANT DISEASES AND PESTS

Many plant pests and diseases deposit eggs or spores in the soil. When your tomatoes are in that same bed near the garden shed year after year, they are providing a ready feast for the beasties, and pest populations can build up. Through crop rotation, you avoid planting plants from the same plant family in the same spot year after year. That way, for several years in a row, a particular beasties favorite plant treat wont be available in that spot. Offspring will go hungry, and that beastie population will naturally die back.

GET

TO KNOW YOUR PLANT FAMILIES

You have cousins, grandparents, and nieces, and your plants do too. You know that you are related to great-aunt Martha, and youre not related to your next door neighbor. A tomato plant is a cousin of a pepper, and eggplant, and a potato. It isnt in the same plant family as kale. Plant families become important because in general plant pests and diseases and plant culture needs are fairly similar across a plant family. In my local neighborhood, the Cabbage White Butterflys larvae will devour any member of the cabbage family (cabbage, kale, collards, broccoli, caulflower). But this same caterpillar is not very interested in snowpeas.

BUILD

S O I L NU T R I T I O N

Soil nutrition is another reason for rotating crops. Some plant families are much more demanding on the soil than others. Squash and broccoli, for example, are nitrogen hogs. They will leave the soil

Environmental Change-Makers
Los Angeles, California www.EnviroChangeMakers.org

When designing your crop rotation to reduce pests, you need to leave a particular area of your garden free from that entire plant family for the full duration of the rotation cycle.

beds C,D,E grew plentiful crops from other plant families. In 2009, the tomato guild was in the C beds. In 2010, the tomato guild moved to the D beds and in summer 2011, the tomato guild was in the E beds. By summer 2012, the tomatoes returned to the B beds once again.

RUN

A F OU R - Y E A R RO T A T I O N

Soil scientists tell us that soil-borne diseases and pests typically linger two to four years. To get out beyond this range, most rotation schemes use a fouryear rotation. That means your tomato family plants wont return to the bed near your garden shed until year five.

KEEP

IT

SIMPLE

TAKE

ADVANTAGE OF COMPANION

Crop rotation can get highly complex very quickly. When you take into consideration companion plants, plant families, and seasonality, together with the constrained size of most of our city gardens whew! There is a lot of information available on the internet, including sample rotations. You can turn to books like John Jeavons How to Grow More Vegetables, or Sally Jean Cunninghams Great Garden Companions. To explain crop rotation to participants in our garden classes here in Los Angeles, we developed the VEGETABLE CROP ROTATION WHEEL. The VEGETABLE CROP ROTATION WHEEL is the plug and play of crop rotation. It allows you to simply piggyback on the crop rotations we use at our highproduction garden in Los Angeles. Instead of figuring it all out, you can simply select plants from a list. We offer the VEGETABLE CROP ROTATION WHEELS (with complete instructions) for sale as a fundraiser for our nonprofit organization. You can find them at www.etsy.com/shop/EnviroChangeMakers

PLANTS
Companion planting acknowledges that certain plants like each other and grow better when they are in close proximity. In some instances, a plant will deter pests from another plant. In other instances, a plant will boost soil nutrition for another. Most companion planting schemes are based upon gardener observation. For example, we noticed that in our Los Angeles gardens the Cabbage White Butterfly was less inclined to lay eggs on cabbagefamily plants which were surrounded by cilantro herb. When you plan the contents of each crop rotation, dont overlook the power of companion planting. At our garden, we move the companion plants the entire set of friends, also called a guild together as a unit. The entire guild moves from bed to bed within our four-year rotation.

AN EXAMPLE
At our garden in Los Angeles the Community Garden at Holy Nativity in the Westchester neighborhood we run a high-production garden. Soil building is very important to maintaining productivity. We divide our main growing area into four groups of beds which we call by letter names: B, C, D, E. In 2008, we planted the tomato family and its friends in the B beds. There were no tomato family members in beds C,D,E. Meanwhile,

Environmental Change-Makers
Los Angeles, California www.EnviroChangeMakers.org