Crop Rotation Made Easy: Feed Your Plants Naturally

Starting an organic garden is a great first step to becoming more self sufficient…

but when you’re new to it, it can be overwhelming!

Growing an organic garden isn’t hard, you just have to keep your soil healthy so that you can avoid using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

One way to keep your garden healthy and productive is implementing crop rotation.

What is crop rotation?

Crop rotation is a strategy for improving your gardens health by grouping like plants together and rotating them to a new location each year. 

Crop rotation does a few things:

It reduces pests and disease

When pests and diseases wake up in the spring they are no longer in close proximity to their favorite treat. Hopefully, the majority of the pests will die trying to find the new place those crops are planted in. Diseases are less likely to infect the new occupants of that bed.

It reduces weeds

Some crops allow weeds to grow and seed more easily, like squash, because it’s hard to get under the leaves to weed, or direct sow plants because they have to compete with weed seeds for propagation.

Improves soil fertility

By grouping plants together that need similar nutrients, we can be sure every plot will have each nutrient used and replaced evenly. Also, some plants root deeper than others. Those that root deepest open up the soil and bring nutrients up for the shallower rooting plants.

Getting started with crop rotation

First things first: Break up your crops into 4 groups: leaf, fruit, root, and legume (this is the order they will be planted in each bed/plot). If you’re having trouble choosing your seeds/crops you might like this post on choosing seeds.

Leaf

This group will include the nitrogen hungry crops like lettuce, spinach, chard, herbs, kale, cabbage, and other brassicas like broccoli and cauliflower. They are planted where last years legumes were.

Fruit

This group is your phosphorous hungry crops. Tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers, melons. Not only do they need lots of phosphorous, but they do best with small amounts of nitrogen, which is why they follow the nitrogen hungry plants (more on that below).

Root

This group is your potassium hungry crops. Carrots, radishes, onions, garlic, turnip, beets. Potatoes are a root but I keep them separate, in potato towers.  Since the diseases and pests that are so harmful to potatoes are also harmful to tomatoes I like to keep them as far apart as possible. Roots need potassium but not a lot of nitrogen, which is why they come next in the rotation, when most of the nitrogen is used up.

Legumes

This group is your nitrogen fixing plants. Peas and green beans are the most common to have in a backyard garden but other beans and nitrogen fixing plants go here too. Those might include soy beans, alfalfa, clover, and fenugreek. These are planted after the root vegetables and before the leaf.

How it works

Leaf vegetable use up lots of nitrogen in the soil. Fruit plants are planted the following year when nitrogen levels are lower. They don’t need a lot of nitrogen, and actually do better with less nitrogen, but need lots of phosphorus. Roots don’t need much nitrogen at all but love potassium, so they follow the fruits.  Legumes fix nitrogen in the soil by pulling it out of the air, preparing the bed for next years leaf vegetables.

Planting the first year

Divide your garden into 4 plots.  Choose which plot each group will go in. I like to keep them in order, clockwise, so I know easily what goes where. 

Crop rotation subsequent years

This year you’ll rotate so that the fruit goes where last years leaf was, roots go where last years fruit was, etc. Leaf>Fruit>Root>Legume>Leaf. Next year you’ll rotate again. The following year you’ll rotate again and then you’ll be back to where you started.

What happens if I don’t grow much of one group?

Ideally each group will be the same size but in reality, they probably aren’t, like if you prefer fruit plants over legumes, like I do. Here are a few things you can do:

• Modify with containers
• Plant legumes between leaf plants (cutting your plots down to 3)
• Add a cover crop instead of legumes
• Combine fruits and roots
• Add a compost plot instead of legumes

Adding a compost plot to the rotation

When it comes to gardening–well anything really–I want things to be as simple and fuss free as possible. So instead of building a pile for compost I use one of my raised beds. That means I am down a bed to grow in each year (though we did get some awesome compost cantaloupe last year!) but I don’t have to move compost from it’s pile to the garden since it’s already there. The compost gets a year to decompose and I don’t have to do any additional work!

So, instead of a legume plot I use a compost pile (which I add manure to also). You could also add a compost pile as a 5th plot so it looks something like this:

That’s it!

It’s pretty simple. Crop rotation paired with a good natural pesticide like this DIY one will go a long way to helping you produce organic vegetables for your family!

Have you ever tried crop rotation? What are your best tips?