Rotating Crops in Vegetable Gardens

You can reduce the plant diseases and insects that attack your

vegetable garden by practicing crop rotation.

Rotating your crops doesn't involve pirouetting potatoes or

planting on turntables. Crop rotation simply involves not

planting crops of the same family in the same section of the

garden year after year.

Plants that are related to each other tend to be prone to the

same diseases and insect pests. For example, squash borers

will attack not only squash vines but also pumpkins. The

squash borer larvae overwinter in the soil, but if they wake

up the next summer and the squash vines are now at the other

end of the garden, the borers will have more difficulty

finding the vines.

Potato beetles and potato scab also overwinter in the soil,

ready to infect the next year's crop. Establish your potato

plot in another section of the garden to avoid those pests,

and plant garlic or onions where the potatoes had been.

Garlic and onions will repel some garden insects and will

also suppress some soil-borne plant diseases.

In the section of the garden where last year's tomatoes or

eggplants were growing, plant some members of the cabbage

family, such as broccoli or cauliflower. These cruciferous

crops have the ability to clean the soil of diseases that

attack members of the nightshade family - potatoes,

tomatoes and eggplant.

Other plants are heavy feeders and will use up much of the

available nutrients in the soil. Sweet corn is a heavy

feeder and has an especially large appetite for nitrogen.

Planting a legume such as peas or beans in that same plot

the following year will replenish the nitrogen that was used

by the corn.

An easy way to rotate crops is to divide your garden into

four equal sections and move particular crops clockwise from

one section to another each year. Rotating your vegetable

crops also gives the garden a different appearance each year

and makes the garden a bit more visually interesting.