Crop rotation and permaculture

Hi all,

most books on permaculture do not even mention crop rotation (in the sense of not planting annauls of the same family on the same bed for a couple of years).

Some practices - like not even having divided beds/blocks but instead just putting plants where a gap appears - seem to make crop rotation virtually impossible.

Permaculture is about observation, and I observe that many gardeneres in the mediterrean plant their winter brassicas in the same beds every year,
on the other hand farmers have developed crop rotation based on observation/insights obtained by several generations,
and those conclusions made it into the conventional gardening/farming books.

When asking other permaculture people IRL about crop rotation, they say that they don't really care about it.
They also bring up examples where people have been successfully ingoring crop rotation rules for decades,
because everything will be fine if you put enough compost on the beds every season.
While this argument seems feasable for nutrients, it is the diseases that are concerning me.

Let me elobarotae with the example of Clubroot( Plasmodiophora brassicae ). If someone plants brassicas on the same spot for 2 decades
and finds his plants free of  Clubroot, i cannot take this as a proof that you can plant brassicas in this way without risking loosing your crop and infesting the soil with clubroot.
My argument is, that if there is no clubroot spores, it will not manifest out of nowhere, no matter what you do.
So if someone wanted to prove to me that just by using sufficent compost you can circumvent the clubroot problem,
he would need to inoculate the soil with clubroot and keep growing.

Now my question is, has anyone ever done such an expermient?

My focus/issues with crop rotation centers around brassicas because they seem to be the staple annual vegetable in the temperate climate
especially during the colder season  (Don't forget Turnips are brassicas , they used to fill the niche potatoes took over) and most of the profitable market gardet crops are brassicas too (Asia salad, arugula, radishes just to name a few).

The only cost that I have incurred in order to do crop rotation is the time it takes to plan it o
I too have not felt convinced that crop rotation is not needed. I worry sitting in one spot might breed conditions to allow unfavorable outcomes when it comes to disease.

Arguments that I heard is that if you have a polyculture then you don't have to worry about crop rotation. The argument is the soil food web interacting with the plants is some kind of 'immune system' compared to monoculture crops? I'm not sure what that mechanism is.

I'll be curious to see some answers!

There may not be a lot of discussion on crop rotation because there is more talk about planting perennial vegetables and planting polycultures.

I am a believer in practicing methods for soil health so I feel crop rotation of annual plants might be necessary depending on the plants.

Maybe some plants use more of the nutrients than others making it a necessity to rotate to something else the next years.

And as Timothy suggests with polyculture this may not be a necessity.

It is a question of balance. With the right combination of living, the right connections, a rich soil, anything you call a plague is an element of the system in imbalance.
The imbalances can be solved killing that which is in excess o adding that which is in default. But it is better and more of a long term solution if it can be solved creating the conditions that discourages that which is in excess and promotes that which is in default.
In what conditions does the clubroot prosper? How can these conditions be prevented? What outcompetes it? How can it be promoted?

Nature hates repeating itself, so growing the same stuff in the same place over and over again will find Nature's oposition. That's why sometimes we neet to fallow. Evolution is dynamic; if your work is static, it will stay behind. Crop rotation is just another method for staying ahead, not the only one.

Abraham Palma wrote:
In what conditions does the clubroot prosper? How can these conditions be prevented? What outcompetes it? How can it be promoted?

I tried some research on that topic, the only thing i found is that acidic soild favours clubroot, whereas alkaline soil somewhat inhibits it.
Also warm wheather favours the patogen, so one should plant them as overwintering crops rather than summer crops.
(makes sense anyway, because there are so many other things to grow during summer, while winter veggies are almost excusively brassicas)

Also there are some brassica cultivars (conventially bred, not GMO) that have resistence agaist clubroot, however the intensive usage of those resisent cultivars on clubroot infested land led to the emergence of new clubroot strains that can infect the resistent cultivars.

Excellent!
Do you know if garlic/onions have any effect on them?