Garden crop rotation
Jun. 4th, 2015 13:36![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillFrom a year ago; I figured it would be good to pull this out of the Facebook memory hole.
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The idea of crop rotation in the home garden is lovely and all, but (at least for us) the numbers don't add up. If I try to break our veggies up into categories, I get:
greens: 44 square feet (cold-weather), 80 square feet (corn)
fruiting crops: 194 square feet
root crops: 75 square feet
legumes: 35 square feet
I can fill in the legumes part with fava beans over the winter and maybe chickpeas, but what a mismatch. Cold-weather greens, the root crops, and beans could rotate, I suppose, but with twice as much area for corn and four times as much for fruiting veggies, I'd have to grow a heck of a lot more stuff we don't eat if I wanted to keep up a strict rotation. I mean, there's donating to the food bank and there's "why am I farming close to a thousand square feet for three people".
Maybe I'll do a one-out-of-three-years rotation and figure that will be enough for soil diversity... disease isn't really an issue here.
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Ha. I've worked out a six(!) year rotation that seems to cover all the bases, assuming six 15' beds divided in half. It's approximate, of course, but I'm impressed that it does work out:
Beans, winter greens, tomatoes and corn, onions/garlic, carrots and beets (followed by a late winter feeding), tomatoes and cucurbits, fava beans, corn and sweet potatoes, fava beans, tomatoes and cucurbits, repeat.
Now, of course, Chez Foogod will put in their requests and blow my ratios to hell. :)
***
[My rotation plan is in an Excel file in my Dropbox. I'll send it to anyone who wants it.]
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The idea of crop rotation in the home garden is lovely and all, but (at least for us) the numbers don't add up. If I try to break our veggies up into categories, I get:
greens: 44 square feet (cold-weather), 80 square feet (corn)
fruiting crops: 194 square feet
root crops: 75 square feet
legumes: 35 square feet
I can fill in the legumes part with fava beans over the winter and maybe chickpeas, but what a mismatch. Cold-weather greens, the root crops, and beans could rotate, I suppose, but with twice as much area for corn and four times as much for fruiting veggies, I'd have to grow a heck of a lot more stuff we don't eat if I wanted to keep up a strict rotation. I mean, there's donating to the food bank and there's "why am I farming close to a thousand square feet for three people".
Maybe I'll do a one-out-of-three-years rotation and figure that will be enough for soil diversity... disease isn't really an issue here.
***
Ha. I've worked out a six(!) year rotation that seems to cover all the bases, assuming six 15' beds divided in half. It's approximate, of course, but I'm impressed that it does work out:
Beans, winter greens, tomatoes and corn, onions/garlic, carrots and beets (followed by a late winter feeding), tomatoes and cucurbits, fava beans, corn and sweet potatoes, fava beans, tomatoes and cucurbits, repeat.
Now, of course, Chez Foogod will put in their requests and blow my ratios to hell. :)
***
[My rotation plan is in an Excel file in my Dropbox. I'll send it to anyone who wants it.]
