Crop rotation vs companion planting

[esmith413]

I am currently looking at my garden and even though I still have 6+ months to have worry about this. I am wanting to make sure that I am doing the whole gardening thing right. Next year I could rotate crops, but I was wondering if I had companion gardening kinda like in the book carrots love tomatoes would I need to rotate my plants? Does any one know?

 

[Denim Deb]

I do companion planting, and I rotate my crops. Different plants take out or add different things to the soil. Plus, if you plant the same crop, or type of crop in the same place every year, you can have more problems w/pests.

 

[esmith413]

I guess my thought process was on the whole nutrient thing.....I didn't really thing about the pest.

The main reason why I ask is because I want to have tomatoes every year, and I don't think I can afford another raised garden next year. I only have 3 raised beds and I have peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers. One plant for each raised bed.

 

[Wannabefree]

You could rotate two beds and replace the soil in one every year. IF that is feasible, it may be your best bet.

 

[moolie]

Tomatoes actually like to be planted in the same place year after year, but you do need to add compost or otherwise amend the soil from year to year.

I also follow Louise Riotte's advice in both Carrots Love Tomatoes and Companion Planting for Successful Gardening and planted my tomatoes in nearly the same spot every year for about 5 years (then we moved).

But I rotated everything else, and was careful with my "companion-ing" each year and also careful to not mess around with plants that don't like "following" one another. I had maps of my garden each year, wish I had kept those...

 

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

I LOVE that Carrots loves tomatoes book and practically consider it my bible while planning my planting. Read the books through and through, and plan it according to what you want to grow to eat. Rotate as much as possible. Be sure to add a marigold and/or basil in between your tomatoes. Cucumbers like melons and sunflowers so those three can share space in a bed (vining cucumbers will climb up the sunflowers, and the melons will spill over and create a beautiful cascade).

Just my 2 cents.

 

[moolie]

Total ditto on the marigolds--my Mom always planted them at the ends of the rows in our huge garden when I was growing up, and most plants benefit from their nearby presence

Tomatoes also like most aromatic herbs, but not all--just think of the herbs you cook with tomatoes, and they also like to grow together.

 

[Marianne]

I ditto Moolie. I'm not going to rotate crops much next year and I'm leaving my tomato patch where it's at. My hens do the fall garden cleanup with light tilling, fertilizing. I don't use any chemical fertilizer or ammendment other than occasional grass, chicken pucky, kitchen scraps and lots of straw mulch. I also leave all the garden debris in there so the hens kick it around. I haven't had any evidence of a nutrient missing.

I sure wouldn't change the soil unless you have a blight problem. That can over winter in the soil and you sure wouldn't want to compost any affected plants.

Not rotating goes against everything we were told, huh. But I have a friend with a tiny garden and everything gets planted in the same spot year after year with good results.

 

[patandchickens]

Crop rotation is really important for large-scale farming.... where you have a huge monoculture stand of one thing. When you're engaged in that sort of activity, between pests and nutrients it is pretty unlikely you will avoid problems if you fail to rotate crops (at least, it becomes a much higher-input-required system if you don't rotate)

However, the necessity for rotating crops in a backyard garden (especially a really, really small one, as opposed to "here is my 100x100 garden") is MUCH MUCH spottier and more irregular, IME.

If you get disease/pest problems that will be resident in the soil til next year, then it is still highly valuable to rotate.

But many many times you DON'T get any such thing infesting your garden. In which case, as long as the nutrient needs of your plants are being met (e.g. thru regular amendment with good compost and so forth) there is really no active benefit to rotating. The most you can say is that it's a leetle bit of insurance against "what if I had the beginnings of a soil-resident pest/disease last year and didn't notice it?"

My mother grew tomatoes in exactly the same place every year from the summer of 1966 to sometime in the mid-80s. At that point she moved them to another location but NOT because of any pest problems, and replaced them by planting more pepper plants in the original bed (which was where she always planted her pepper plants since 1966 too). They sold the house in 2009 and moved to a retirement home. I do not, in those 43 years, remember mom EVER EVER having problems with blight or anything else (other than self-inflicted maladies such as mild blossom end rot or "insufficiently caged tomatoes fall over in a mess during hard storm").

And sometimes you just can't rotate, either because you grow mostly one type of crop, or because there is genuinely only one part of your property that is sunny enough or unsoggy enough, or things like that.

My suggestion is not to sweat it until and unless you start seeing problems that are likely to remain resident in the soil til next year. I mean if you have the room to easily rotate crops its still a good idea but if it ISN'T convenient then by no means is it the kiss of death or anything like that, it may not ever matter to you, you just have to wait and see.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[valmom]

We don't really have enough sunny space to rotate anything, so we don't. Nothing here is ideal, but this year we are trying a "3 sisters" garden for the first time. Corn, squash and beans in one spot. Apparently the squash keeps out corn pests and the beans grow up the corn stalk and don't kill it. I hope.