Allen Lemrow

Wowie so much info here. thank you everyone for your information and example sharing.

FYI i am in zone 6A Western Maryland Mountains, about 2800ft elevation.  

Hey thank you, i am actually also going to attempt a small food forest or fruit tree guild also mainly with perennials.  I have (2)4 in 1 apple trees, looking for a pendragon and maybe 2 cold hardy pomegranates.  I will be planting saskatoon berry, goumi berry, goose berry, asparagus,   garlic chives and wild strawberry there.  Along with some bee balm, lemonbalm, maybe lupine. Also prolly some hostas or other shade tolerante plants. And li will liekly also include a small annual section, this will mainly be just more legumes that i can easily access and will fix nitrogen. Its going to be busy year.

Anne Miller wrote:I hope that by bumping your topic with this information there might be more discussions.

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.

It seems that the permaculture answer to this is to plant perennials.

Though promoting perennials this article says it is a 4-year plan.

 

common collection for us to consider now for a basic four-year rotation plan.

   • Nightshades (Solanaceae): potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant

   • Cruciferous (Brassicaceae): kale, cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, mustard

   • Legumes (Fabaceae): green beans, garden peas, snow peas, kidney beans, lentils

   • Roots (Amaryllidaceae): onions, leeks, garlic, (Apiaceae): beets, parsnips, celery, carrots and (Chenapodiaceae): beets

https://www.permaculturenews.org/2016/11/18/rotate-annual-crops/

Bonnie Plants offers an easy plan using 4 crops that are rotated every planting:

 

One approach to crop rotation is to divide your plants into these four basic groups: legumes, root crops, fruit crops, and leaf crops. Imagine your garden separated into four areas, as shown in the chart at the top of the page. Each successive year, you would move each group one spot clockwise. So, for example, you would plant your legumes in Area 1 one year, then the next year you’d move them to Area 2 while the leaf crops from Area 4 moved into now-vacant Area 1—and so on.

https://bonnieplants.com/the-bonnie-blog/crop-rotation-made-easy/

It makes sense to me that different plants use different nutrients so rotating plants every year seems logical.

Thank you for the reply. I was under the impression that crop rotation was necessary. It will be a home garden roughly 30x30 or 36x24 I am trying to grow as organic as possible. Was able to raise about 30 strawberry plants last year in raises beds complety organic except one application of miracle grow at first planting and one dose of neem oil late in season.

. I did have a plan of using a cover crop to help loosen soil, its rather compacted around here.  I will be planting cardinal basil, lemon balm and marigold throughout to help keep pests down. Also some borage and maybe some sunflowers.  I planned on cover cropping one full bed, and  covercrop between rows late in season just to build some soil.  I was going to plant half of each crop with a slow release organic fert like dr earth and and the other half with a more often but low dose powdered into water feeding schedule to see if there was much difference for me.   If the easiest plan of action with roughly the same outcome is to not rotate then i may not as it will save me some needed yard space due to not needing a cover crop bed.  I never really thought about the small scale not effecting crop rotation as much.

Matt McSpadden wrote:Hi Allen,
I'm actually going to take a step back and ask a different question. Why would we want to do crop rotation at all? The two problem reasons that I know of, to do crop rotation is to avoid diseases and to deal with nutrient deficiencies. And those aren't that big of a deal.

In the first case, with diseases, if you don't have a disease in a certain spot, then there is no need to rotate. If there is a disease in a spot, at a home garden scale, moving it over 5 feet may not be effective enough.

As for nutrient deficiencies, these should not be a big deal if one is gardening in an organic manner to feed the soil. You will be increasing microbiology and adding things like compost, which will even out the availability of the nutrients.

Now for there are some beneficial reasons like loosening soil and increasing nitrogen. If you simply cut off the tops of legumes, the nitrogen around their roots will become available for the next plants. If you plant certain root crops they can loosen the soil for the next crop. There is also benefits to inter-planting crops to attract beneficial bugs and confuse the bad bugs.

That is the long way of saying that I do it in my garden, and I believe it to be beneficial, but both the problems and the benefits are much less on a small scale than they are on a large scale.

I wish you the best of luck with gardening.

Is there a particular fungi you can add to shredded leaves to speed up the decomposing process?  i know leaf mould making is a slower process than composting and works on fungi not bacteria.  I have massive amounts of leaves ( mainly maple and alil oak) to rake each year and to start adding them to my garden.

Hello, new to gardening. Please let me know what you think would be a better crop rotation and why.


cover crop, Zucchini carrots and onions, green beans, tomato and peppers

cover crop, tomatoes and peppers, green beans, tomato and peppers


Does it matter if I have the tomatoes and peppers follow a cover crop or the green beans crop?  We will be harvesting the green beans not sure if that makes a large difference or not.


Also my zucchini crop will be the main crop and I will be planting carrots and onions and shallots with it, or zucchini and small sugar baby watermelons.  Any thoughts on which combination is better.  

FYI the exterior of my garden and a some dedicated rows in my garden will have Borage, Beebalm, and cardinal basil.  The exterior corners and middle will have some lemonbalm.

I am also planning on doing no till in the future and thinking about doing about 1 foot rows of a no-till winter kill cover crop between rows at the end of the growing season, thoughts?

Lots of great info here, thanks everyone

If I want to plant marigold and dwarf nasturtium under my tomato's and peppers will I need to increase distance or should they be fine since the marigold and dwarf nasturtium are low growing.

I was planning on  spacing my tomatoes and peppers 24" in all directions and then place either a marigold or dwarf nasturtium in the center of each (x) if you will, the center of 4 tomatoes or peppers.

Thanks

Riona Abhainn wrote:While I don't know all these answers off the top of my head I wanted to say welcome to the forums here, and someone much smarter than I will likely get back to you soon with some good info.

Hello, thank you for the kind welcome

Hello all, a few newby questions here.  I am working on an apple tree guild and  also an additional garden off to the side due to property boundaries, septic field etc.

How closely can I plant bad companion plants without causing issues.  Such as:

-how close can I plant beans next to onions, what amount of buffer distance do I need between them.  
-How close can I plant peppers next to onions/chives/garlic, what buffer distance do I need.
-marigold and beans
-

Do the following they have anything they can not be planted next to:
-borage
-lupines
-Basil
-lemonbalm
-marigold

My plan is to strategically plant lupines, borage, and lemonbalm throughout the garden if possible, maybe even comfrey in some corners.  And edge the garden with basil,  garlic chives/ onion/marigold nasturium etc.    Primarily i want to use perennials on the exterior edge, then rotate  my beans,  allium/onion crop, tomatoes, peppers, and zuchinni inside the garden on a yearly basis using 4-5 beds inside.  Planting around and through my tree guild will be different.

I was also thinking about combining additional beans with the tomatoes and peppers for purely the nitrogren help, and then also have a dedicated bean plot.
If i have 4 beds that will rotate with  Dedications to Onion, Zucchini, tomato & pepper combined, and bean. Can I still put a bean plant in the non onion beds to help with nitrogen or would it cause fungus/bacteria issues due to beans being in the same beds year after year?  Would lupine be a better option.

So much to learn
Any help is appreciated, thanks.