DigitalVinyl wrote in message . ..
I've read a lot about rotaing crops/plants and for me it isn't
terribly practical. Tomatoes & peppers cover most of my area so
rotating really can't be done. I only have one large size container
without peppers(7 plants) or tomatoes(3 plants) so unless I grow my
garden considerably rotation really isn't possible. (I've kept it
small and maintainable) And next year I'm looking to add more hot
peppers and a cherry tomato.

I seem to recall reading a note from one person that said tomatoes
could be in the same place year after year without issue. However
several problems affect tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and even potatoes,
so unless you have a lot of space dedicated to NOT those four I don't
see how small gardeners can rotate.

I recognized this before I started and one thing I did to maybe
compensate was a lot of interplanting. Lettuce, spinach, radishes,
carrots, onions, garlic, peas, half-dozen herbs & flowers were all
planted in the same beds as T&P. Whether that helps to keep specific
bacteria and disease from building up in the soil... i dunno.
Hopefully I will move before I find out.


DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email)
Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY, 1 mile off L.I.Sound
1st Year Gardener

As frogleg has pointed out, rotation is mostly for disease prevention.
Here in Michigan my tomatoes are virtually free of disease (big, big
difference from Georgia) and they could be planted in the same place
every year. I am guessing coastal NY is more disease prone, milder
winters and wetter growing seasons. One of my neighbours even has a
spot along a fence where cherry tomatoes and lettuce come up year
after year. She only weeds out the weeds every spring.

Coupled to rotation, what you do with your plants in the fall is also
part of the equation. You should either toss them or hotcompost them,
but that is not what I do. Sometimes I put them on the lawn and mow
them, sometimes I put them under the raspberries, and sometimes I put
them on top of my smaller beds where greens are grown, and greens are
totally immune to disease in this corner of the world.

This said, I have my tomatoes on a 3-year rotation, which I will
probably cut down to two starting next year because in the third year
I have them over three beds and that is too messy for my taste. I
could have a much longer rotation but my beds are oriented N-S and I
prefer to use only the back of the beds for the toms.

There is also the issue that different veggies deplete the soil at
different rates for different nutrients. Rotation helps even out the
load on your beds. Cabbage certainly sucks a lot of N out of the soil,
and tomatoes probably a whole lot of K.

In your case you have no choice, so keep doing what you have, make
sure you throw away the plants in the fall, and give them generous
amounts of manure.